


The Fall

by Elsby72



Series: Archer's Paradox [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 49,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsby72/pseuds/Elsby72
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We can stay here. Frozen. While the city burns around us. We can wait for him to come back and save us. Or we can admit that he's not coming back, and we can save ourselves.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“Oliver."_

Oliver couldn’t breathe. Ra’s al Ghul’s mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear the words. He closed his eyes again, trying to call up again the image of Felicity, the golden warmth of her. For a moment, he could taste her again, and it didn’t matter whether or not he had air.

Then she was gone. He could feel abyss at his back. He had known when he came here that this was how it would end. He was so tired, and now he could rest. He could let himself fall.

Thea was safe. He had paid her debt. He held to that thought as his body tumbled over the cliff, down into the dark. Felicity's image was fading.

_“Oliver. Wake up.”_

No. He was dead. Dead men don’t wake up.

He could be with his mother now. He thought he could feel her, holding him like she used to do when he was a boy, his face buried against warm cashmere and silk. He could let himself cry now, like he used to - no need to be strong anymore. She would hold him until he was ready.

_“Please…”_

He barely felt the impact, but suddenly he was gasping and air was flooding his lungs again. It wouldn’t make a difference, he knew. The cold would take him soon. It crept over him as his blood stained the snow around him, but he felt no pain. When a hard, frantic arm, shaking and fumbling, lifted and draped him across a pair of heaving shoulders, he was already gone.

 _“You have to, Oliver. Wake up._ Wake up.”

It was the voice of a man, and it was familiar. Oliver knew that if he obeyed it he would feel the cold, and the fire of pain in his chest. Worse, he would lose Felicity - her warmth, her taste on his lips. There had been so much, in life, to take her away from him. Please, he thought, not in death, too.

But the voice was desperate, frantic with worry, and Oliver was responding before he was aware of it. He opened his eyes.

The pain was worse than he could have imagined. It filled his lungs. He was drowning. He choked, gasped, and felt himself being lifted until he was sitting up. After a moment his breath steadied. The pain didn’t go away, but he could handle pain. It was the helplessness of injury and weakness that he couldn’t bear.

At first, all he saw was smoke and light. Then the image resolved. He wasn’t on the cliff, or in the snow. Ra’s al Guhl was gone. How much time had passed? He was in a small, bare room with a fireplace, a table, and nothing else.

He was wrapped in blankets and, though there was a fire in the fireplace, he could feel cold seeping in from everywhere - the cracks in the walls, the warped single window, the large space beneath the door. He turned his head to take in the man by his side, but he didn’t need to. The voice had been as familiar as his own.

“Tommy?”

******************************

 

Felicity turned the final screw in the new office chair and, grunting a bit as she stood, flipped it upright. There. She slid it in place in front of new computer set-up - a U shape, so that she could swivel from screen to screen without having to move. Digg watched as she worked.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“You need any help with that?”

“Nope.  Just finishing up… there.” She moved the fern from the arrow case so that it sat next to her primary screen. “This way I’ll remember to water it. You know, until he gets back.”

“Mm-hm. Felicity…”

“And it’s ergonomic. Remember how I was saying my back was sore?”

“Yeah. Right after that time you went ballistic on the training bag, trying to show up Sara.”

“Oh. Well… I thought maybe it was the chair.”

“Look, Felicity….”

“I spend a _lot_ of time in chairs, is what I’m saying. In front of computers.  A _lot_.” She walked over to where he was sitting on the floor and plopped down next to him, pulling her knees in towards her chest. “I mean, between here and work. It’s important to have the right chair.”

Digg was silent.

“And when he comes back, he’s going to want to get right to work. He’s been so focused on this League of Assassins thing, he’s going to want to get back to regular crime fighting. You know… bank robbers. Bankers. Stuff like that.”

“Felicity.”

“ _He’s coming back, Digg._ ” Her voice rose. She clasped her hands together so that Digg wouldn’t see that they were shaking.

Digg watched her as she opened a chest of arrowheads and began sorting through, pulling some out to be rigged. “I know he likes to do this himself, but he’s running low on the sedated tips.”

“ _Felicity._ He’s been gone a week.”

She whirled to face him, clutching an arrow in her hand. “We don’t know where the secret location was, Digg! It could have been China. It could have been Antarctica!”

“I want him to come back too. But… he said goodbye, Felicity. To both of us.”

“He said that he thought he could win. I _know_ that he can win.”

“I believe he could. But…” Digg gently took the arrowhead out of her hand. “He was tired. And more than that. He was _weary_. Bone-weary. I think the fighting was wearing him down.” Digg held her gaze, unflinching. “I’m sorry. But don’t know how badly he _wanted_ to win.”

There was a long silence. “Digg… right before he left. He told me he loved me.”

Digg was quiet.

“I didn’t say it back.”

“Felicity, do you really need me to tell you that he already knew?”

Felicity’s breath came faster, and tears came to her eyes. “So that’s it. I love him, and he loves me, and we both know it. Isn’t that supposed to feel good? Aren’t I supposed to feel better? To feel some kind of closure? Digg, I wish he _didn’t_ love me. I wish I didn’t know.” She dissolved into sobs. “I don’t want to think about what it could have been like… what we could have had. He was so _stupid_ these past few months. That was time we could have had together! He wasted it! He wasted _us_! And then he went off to die! What’s the point of that? What are any of us fighting for if there’s nothing at the end of it but… this?”

His face impassive, Digg caught and held her while she wept.

 

*****************************

 

Felicity kept her back to Digg as she sorted arrowheads and he cleaned his gun. She hated feeling this way - always the one to cry, always the first to break. She knew better than to call it weakness, but at times like these - when Digg was stoic and Roy was going through the motions in the club upstairs, putting on a brave face and keeping up the lie to Thea that Oliver had gone on a last-minute beach getaway -- having normal human emotions made her feel a little crazy.

They had lived like this for days, leaving briefly one at a time to pick up food or check in with Roy. For the first few days they told one another that they were doing it in case he came back, or called and needed something. Then, they stopped telling each other anything at all. They just waited. Digg focused on training, and Felicity rearranged, cleaned, or reorganized everything she could get her hands on.

She knew that they couldn’t keep doing this. Digg had to go home - he had a family. And eventually Felicity would have to go back to work. She had been calling in sick, gamely coughing into Ray’s voicemail at odd hours when she could be sure that he wouldn’t pick up- which, with Ray, was tricky. She’d been successful so far, calling between 2 and 3 a.m., but it was only a matter of time before he caught on and waited for the call.

She knew he assumed that she was keeping away because she was freaked out after he showed her his superhero suit, rigged with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weaponry that was shrunk down to be conveniently pocket-sized. Actually, he wasn’t wrong.  She _had_ been pretty freaked out by that. She hadn’t forgotten about it, either, or his request that she help him save the city.

Her first instinct had been to dismiss it out of hand, to chalk it up to that puppyish enthusiasm with which Ray approached all of his new projects. It was just a daydream, and he would get over it he got his next idea, for solar powered hedge trimmers or a potato that could grow on the moon.

But then… why _not_ use the suit? Oliver had been a just spoiled rich kid before taking on his mission. He had made mistakes. He had killed people - and, more than once, he had almost gotten himself killed. Ray would be going into this with more than just skill. He had planned the weapons and the suit carefully, and what little she had given him time to explain impressed her. She thought about Barry, an ingenuous klutz, who had been given superpowers and now was saving the day in Central City - about once a week, if the newspapers were anything to go by. What if Ray could be like him - but with a super-suit instead of superpowers? Sure, he had no idea what he was getting into, but neither had Barry. Neither had Oliver, for that matter.

It still felt wrong. Not least, it felt wrong to be thinking about this while Oliver was still missing. Part of her knew that she was thinking about this now precisely _because_ Oliver was missing, and she couldn’t bear to dwell on that fact for too long.

She finished with her stack of arrows and stood up. Digg didn’t say anything, but she could tell by the way his eyes followed her that he was still worried about her. She had to hold herself together if only to prove to herself that she _could_ hold it together. If Digg was right… she couldn’t think about it. But things might only get worse from here, and she couldn’t fall apart. Digg would need her, even if he didn’t know how to say it.

And she had to tell Digg to go home. Lyla, waking up five times a night to feed or change the baby, taking time off from her own job, watching from the sidelines, hadn’t made a murmur of complaint. But it wasn’t fair to leave her alone with Sara when there was nothing for Digg to do but wait and keep Felicity company.

She would tell him to go home. She would _make_ him go home. And she would go back to work, and think of something to say to Ray about his plans for becoming a superhero. She would tell him what she knew - that it was no life for anyone, especially not for a man hoping to have a life. That it was no way to honor his fiance’s memory. And that it was a path that, once he started, he couldn’t come back from.

She would do all of that - but not yet. Tomorrow. She would wait - she would hope - for just one more day.

 

**************************************

 

Oliver shivered. He couldn’t remember the last time that he felt cold - really cold. On the island, maybe. He couldn’t remember now, but there must have been a time when he still felt things like cold, tired, hungry.

“It’s the blood loss,” said Tommy, reaching his left arm from beneath his own blanket to grab a log from the stack and toss it on the fire. “It’s not that cold in here, actually. Nothing compared to when I first came.”

“When you… first came.” The blood loss must be affecting his mind, too. He couldn’t form the question he needed to ask. It sounded foolish when he tried. “You’re not dead.”

“Apparently not.”

“And neither am I.”

“Thanks to me. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Oliver felt like he was fighting to think through a thick fog. Memories rose up through it. “But - I saw -” the black smoke, like snakes coiling around them. The light fading from Tommy’s eyes. Oliver had seen enough men die to know what it looked like. “I saw you die.” Even after all this time, even with Tommy sitting before him -- the same old Tommy, though with shadows in his eyes now, behind the glint of humor -- he still choked on the sentence. No one should have to watch their best friend die.

Evidently, he hadn’t.

“Almost. You saw me _almost_ die. I know -- that spike gutted me. Then again,” Tommy glanced meaningfully at Oliver’s own chest, “evidently gaping chest wounds aren’t what they used to be.” Tommy glanced out the window and, almost absent-mindedly, walked over to draw the threadbare curtain in front of it. “But I survived. Well, most of me did. Thanks, believe it or not, to my father.”

“Merlyn saved you. But how? I had just….”  But of course, he hadn’t killed him. At the time, he believed that Merlyn was dead by the time he got to Tommy. Now he knew that the man had escaped, somehow.  

“Yes.” Tommy watched Oliver carefully, guardedly. “You lied to me, you know. You thought I was dying so you told me that you hadn’t killed him. It’s OK“ -- his hand emerged again from under the blanket to stop Oliver’s interjection-- “you thought you were letting me die in peace. And as it turned out, you weren’t lying after all. My father survived, and he came looking for me.” A shadow crossed Tommy’s face. “After all this time, I still don’t understand…. He risked his own life, badly wounded as he was. He knew that I would come for Laurel, and he made it just as I was bleeding out. I don’t understand how he got to me through the rubble….” Tommy laughed bitterly. “I guess you could say that a father’s love gave him strength. But I’m not convinced that love had anything to do with it.” Tommy stared into the fire, lost in thought. Oliver decided not to press for details that Tommy might not even know, himself. They both should have been dead. Instead, they were both here. Oliver wondered if he should feel good about that.

Tommy cleared his throat, as though remembering that he wasn’t alone. “It doesn’t matter now. Find me he did. He had this stuff. Nasty stuff. This black dirt, sort of. It _tasted_ like dirt. He made me swallow it and poured it in my wound. Then… something happened. I don’t know, Oliver. I don’t know how to explain it. You know I’m not religious but… he pulled me off the spike, and I should have been dead. It felt like I died. It felt like my whole body was on fire. But then… well, I woke up. I couldn’t move.” Tommy’s eyes grew unfocused.  “Oliver, the pain was so bad. I don’t know how to tell you… I _wanted_ to die.” And my father, he was there, but he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t speak to me. He just said, ‘keep him alive. After that, do what you will.’” Tommy’s face was drawn and pale. “Later, I found out that Ra’s al Ghul owed him a debt - evidently my father saved his life, a long time ago. It was why they allowed him to live after he left the League. I don’t know why he decided to waste the debt on me, but he did. And now if they ever find him again, they’ll kill him.” Tommy’s voice was oddly flat. Oliver thought he understood why - it was hard to believe that anything that Merlyn did was selfless. It seemed more likely that he had saved Tommy, not out of love, but to use as a pawn, like he had with Thea. And Tommy wasn’t blind - he knew that leaving him to fend for himself among the League was hardly a loving act. Still, he must feel a sense of - what? Gratitude? Obligation? _Do I feel grateful to Tommy?_

“So they kept me alive. They tried to train me as an assassin - mostly by beating me and hoping that I would fight back. When I refused to follow in my father’s footsteps, they left me here. They send novices out once a week with firewood and food. I think they’re hoping that if they wait long enough, I’ll die of despair.” Tommy shrugged. “Or boredom. Either way, you can imagine how I felt when I heard them talking about you. I thought maybe you were going to be my way out, back to Starling City. But when I heard that you were planning on fight Ra’s, I figured that if I wanted you to save me, I was going to have to save you first.”

Oliver closed his eyes, seeing again the receding face of Ra’s, the moments of warmth and light. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”

Suddenly, Tommy’s eyes snapped back into focus. His gaze ricocheted from the window to the door and his voice dropped to a breathless whisper. “Did you hear that?”

Oliver had heard it. A twig snapped outside, followed by complete silence. No animal, then - an animal would have made no sound at all or would have kept going, not stopped to cover its tracks. He went to jump to his feet and almost screamed in pain - he had to shove his fist in his mouth to muffle the sound. Tommy was standing next to the window, flat against the wall. Eyes wide, he watched as Oliver struggled against light-headedness and made his way, slowly, to his feet.

“Oliver,” he whispered, “listen. I know that you have a fresh through-and-through sword wound. I know that you’ve been unconscious on my floor for three days. I know that it’s about three degrees out and you’re not wearing a shirt or shoes. But Oliver, in about a minute, I’m going to tell you to run. And when that happens? _You need to run._ ”

 

******************************************

 

The roses arrived in the morning. They came addressed to the club and, luckily, Roy was the one to answer the door. Stone faced, he brought them down the stairs and placed the box in front of Felicity.

“They’re for you,” he said.

She knew before she opened them. If Oliver had survived, he would not have sent her flowers.  He would not have wasted a moment, once he was back to civilization, before letting them know he was OK.

Or, she had to admit, he would have disappeared into the wilderness. Back to the island, maybe, or to another secret lair where he could be alone to think. She had no doubt he still had some that he hadn’t told them about. With a pang, she realized that now they would never know. They would never know half of the things that had happened to him on the island. _What a strange thing to be sad about._

She was stalling, she knew. She opened the box. Digg and Roy stood silently and watched as she lifted a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses.

She lifted them out, but her arms felt too weak to hold them. She dropped them and they splayed across the floor like a broken bird’s wing. Absently, she watched as her hands bloomed with blood. The thorns, she realized. Odd that she hadn’t felt them.

“Why yellow?” asked Roy.

“For Sara,” said Digg. “Canary. Nyssa thinks that his - death - honors Sara’s memory.”

As soon as he said the word, it was real. Felicity no longer cared about the secret lairs she would never see, or the adventures on the island she would never hear about. He was gone. Oliver. Her Oliver. His sweet, rare grin. His beautiful, battered, broken heart. _Dead._ She wanted to throw the word on the floor with the flowers, but it rang in her head, clotted in her veins, filled her lungs and choked her. _Dead, dead, dead._

Her heart stopped. She had used the expression before, in her head, every time he, Digg and Roy went on a mission. The door would close, and for a moment, her heart would falter, and her mouth would go dry. Then she would focus on her job, on keeping them safe the only way she could, and her heart would start up and she would begin to breathe again.

But never before had it stopped, truly stopped, like this. Oh, she knew it was still pumping blood through her body. She was still alive - _not like Oliver, her Oliver_ \-- but her heart, the piece of her that was _her_ , had gone to ground. It had known, as soon as she saw the box of flowers, that it couldn’t survive this.

Digg was leaning over, braced against the table, his face hidden. Roy was still. His eyes were those of a wounded animal - bewildered, frightened, frantic. Felicity, her voice sounding odd and far away to her own ears, said the only thing she could think, knowing that they both needed a task, something to focus on.

“What are we going to tell Thea?”

It jolted Roy back to reality, as she had known it would. “We tell her,” he said. “Everything.”

Digg straightened at this. His face was impassive. “Are you crazy?” he asked.

“We should have told her all along! I lost her because of the lies. Oliver almost lost her. We were never really keeping her safe. And now - now there’s nothing stopping us.”

“You mean, _he’s_ not stopping us. So that’s it?” said Digg. “He’s gone and we just forget about what he wanted?  I didn’t know we were that kind of team, Roy. “

“But we’re _not_ a team anymore, that’s the point! It doesn’t matter anymore! And this way at least Thea will know that she has something to be proud of! That he didn’t die in, what, a parasailing accident? Another shipwreck? What were _you_ planning on telling her?”

“Not the one thing he didn’t want her ever to know! That he wasn’t the brother she thought he was! Do you want her to lose him twice?”

“ _Stop it._ ” Felicity’s voice was high and thin.  “What are you doing? This is the one thing we can’t do! We’re the only ones - the only ones who know, who can remember him, all of him. If we fall apart - if we turn on each other - there’s nothing left of him. “

Roy ran his hand roughly over his face and through his hair,  and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I guess…. I guess we don’t have to tell Thea anything yet. We have time to decide.”

Digg looked evenly at Roy. “I’m sorry, man. I know that’s going to fall on you. But you don’t have to be in it alone - we’ll figure it out. You’re wrong - we are still a team. His team. Always.”

They were all walking on ice now, inching forward, pretending it was land beneath their feet  even though they knew that they were inches from plunging through into the cold abyss.

“There are other things to figure out, too,” Roy said, dropping into a chair. The animal look was back in his eyes, but he was functioning. “What are we going to do now? Do we still patrol? This city still needs us.”

Felicity stood up. “Digg, go home.”

Digg looked startled. “What? Felicity, Roy’s right. We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

“Digg, _go home_. Lyla and Sara need you - and you need them.” _Be with them now, while they’re still here._  “And I need…. I need to go to work.”

_“What?”_

“Look, I’m going to lose my job.” That wasn’t true. She could miss another six months and Ray still wouldn’t fire her. “We have time to talk about all of this. None of us should make any decisions right now. We’re all acting like we’re going to have to leap into action any minute.”

“But we might,” said Roy. “We might have to leap into action. That’s what the heroes do, right?”

“But we’re not heroes.” Felicity shrugged on her jacket and headed for the door. “Not anymore.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was a black and white world. Black trees, white sky. Black birds, white snow. Oliver saw a single rose-colored bird swoop down from a tree, shrieking and scattering the smaller, darker birds. He instinctively ran towards the color.

“No!” gasped Tommy, behind him. “This way -  away from the road. They’ll be looking for us there.”

Oliver didn’t know how he was still moving. He could barely breathe. The sword had run him through and, as he staggered forward, he could feel every inch of the blade searing through him again and again. He glanced down and saw blood seeping through the front of the blanket that he still clutched around him - he must have torn open Tommy’s makeshift stitches.

Oliver wondered if he was trading quick death at the hands of the League for a prolonged one out in the snow, taking Tommy down with him. But survival was a habit that he couldn’t break. He had wanted to die, again and again, on the island, and each time he heard the injunction  from his father, from Yao Fei, even from Slade - _survive_. It whispered in his muscles and his bones, and now other voices joined the chorus - his mother, Thea, Felicity. _Survive, survive, survive._

Suddenly, something slammed against his back and took him down. It was Tommy, who now lay on top of him, panting for breath. “Don’t. Make. A _sound_.”  He pulled his own blanket - grey, like the massive tree stump they huddled against - over both of their heads.

It was a change in the quality of the air more than anything else. Oliver recognized it from his time on the island - when you live as prey, you learn to sense when there’s a hunter nearby. He gritted his teeth. He wasn’t used to being prey these days.

After a moment, Tommy let out his breath. The man had passed by as silently as he had arrived.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Oliver grunted as he hauled himself up and out of the snowbank they had landed in.

“It wouldn’t have, except they only ever send novices out to deal with me. If it had been a real member of the League,  we wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“No, I mean I can’t believe you took me down. You couldn’t even do that in peewee football. If I didn’t have a hole running through me…”

Tommy grinned, and punched Oliver on the arm. Hard. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, man.”

They sat in silence for a moment, shivering under their blankets.  Tommy looked at the growing stain on the front of Oliver’s blanket. “Yeah, I didn’t have much faith in those stitches.  I didn’t exactly have all the equipment to get the job done. It’s gonna be one scary looking scar.”

“It’ll match the others, then. Some of Felicity’s early work is pretty bad.”

“Felicity? Oh… the ditzy blond? You’ve been letting her stitch you up?  Yikes. I knew QC wasn’t doing well, but I thought your insurance still covered hospital visits.”

Oliver decided to let “ditzy blond” go. “Some of my injuries would be a little… tricky ...to explain to the hospital staff.” He stopped, aware that he was approaching dangerous territory. When Tommy had died, Oliver had hoped that he had forgiven him first, whether or not he deserved it. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought that his best friend had gone to his grave hating him. But now that, by some miracle, he’d gotten Tommy back, he didn’t want to rock the boat by bringing up the Vigilante.

Tommy seemed not to have heard him. He was listening again, and stood up suddenly. Oliver had heard it too, and sprang to his feet with a speed that gave no indication of his pain.

“Shit. They doubled back.” Tommy turned to run but Oliver grabbed him.

“No. It’s too late.” Surely enough, a man emerged silently from the trees in the direction that Tommy would have gone. As Tommy spun around, others emerged one by one from behind and around them, until they were surrounded.

There were five of them in all, each dressed in simple black robes, without the flourishes that the other Assassins had worn. They looked like monks, but moved with the taut readiness of soldiers.

Oliver didn’t give them time to think. He launched himself at the man who had been first to emerge, and who had glanced first at Oliver’s bloodstain, telling Oliver everything he needed to know. The man expected him to be weak and favoring his wound, so Oliver led with his right, wounded side, ignoring the pain and taking the man by surprise - and because he was weak, he didn’t waste time fighting fair. With the first blow, he punched the man’s breastbone hard enough to break it, knocking the air out of his lungs and making it too painful to refill them. With his second hit, he knocked the man out. With every movement, he felt like he was coming back to life. Fighting through the pain, using weakness as strength, letting his instincts do the thinking - these were the moments he was entirely himself, completely alive, free of doubt. Free.

He didn’t look at the fallen body, not wanting to know if it was still breathing. Instead, he turned and saw Tommy spinning, ducking, and lashing out in the center of the other four assassins.  Somehow, by keeping one arm tucked close to his body going into his spin kicks, Tommy was able to get incredible force behind the blows. His upper body seemed to be an afterthought, as he held all five assassins at bay with agility and force. It was a fighting style that Oliver had never seen, and it was utterly deadly.

Then, Oliver saw what he had been looking at all along. He remembered Tommy’s hand snaking out from the blanket to add wood to the fire, punch Oliver on the arm, help Oliver to his feet. Tommy’s _left_ hand. But Tommy was -- had been -- right-handed. And now, as he took one of the assassins down with a devastating kick, Oliver realized that Tommy wasn’t holding his right arm close to his body. His right arm wasn’t there.

There was no time to feel shocked. Oliver’s head was spinning from blood loss and he had never felt pain like that from the sword wound. His lungs were burning from the cold air, his muscles were trembling with weakness, and for the first time since Ra’s al Ghul had pushed him over that cliff - maybe longer - he felt _alive_. There was no doubt, no fear: just the animal joy of survival. He was the prey who was about to take down the hunters.

The remaining assassins didn’t last long once Oliver joined the fight. He followed Tommy’s lead, protecting his wound by doing most of his fighting with his lower body. His muscles, flooded with oxygen after long stillness, burned and sang with effort. He remembered what it was to fight without the bow, to _be_ the bow, drawing himself taut and releasing with explosive force.

The last assassin fell, and Tommy turned to Oliver. They stood for a moment, steaming in the freezing air. Tommy grinned.

“I never said I _couldn’t_ fight. Just that I wouldn’t fight for the League.”

“We don’t have much time. They’ll be coming back to comb the woods.” Oliver turned over possibilities in his mind. No allies, no shelter… with a little time, he could rig a bow out of the pliable wood of a sapling, but there was no time to carve arrowheads.The two of them couldn’t take out a group much bigger than they just had without weapons. If they were going to make it home… and suddenly, Oliver was very sure that he was going to make it home. He felt like he was waking up after a long dream. He had been so ready to die for Thea -- and he _had_ died. Now it was time to live. “And we’re half naked in the woods. Surrounded by ninja assassins. I can probably take a few more of them out hand-to hand, but...”

Tommy snorted, “OK, first of all? Don’t make it sound so romantic. _You’re_ half-naked, buddy. I’m fully clothed. Second, don’t be stupid. You could probably take _yourself_ out, trying to take them out. You can barely stand up. We need to get warm before our toes fall off, and we need to get your stitches fixed before you bleed out. I am _not_ dragging your ass miles through the tundra, stitching you up one-handed, and feeding you baby-bird style for a week just to have you die of blood loss now.” He held out a hand to help Oliver up. “Come on. I have somewhere we can go.”

 

********************************************

 

Felicity had been at work for an hour, staring vaguely at her screen, when Ray knocked lightly at her door.

“Woah,” he said, seeing her face. “I was all ready to give you a hard time about avoiding me but… I guess you really _have_ been sick. “  
  
“What?” Felicity felt like she was speaking from the end of a very long tunnel. Nothing seemed real. She was at work - she worked here. At Queen Consolidated, for Walter and Oliver - _no_. At Turner Technologies. She was a vice president, not an IT tech. She had to snap out of it.

“Should you be here?” Ray looked concerned. “Felicity, do you need to go home? You can take all the time you need… you know that, right?”

“No!” Felicity jumped up, sending her chair toppling over backwards. “I’m fine. I need to be here. Ray, I know sometimes I’m … distracted. But I need to be here right now. I need to be working. “

“Of course.” Ray approached slowly, as though Felicity were a skittish animal, and helped her right the chair. He gently lowered her into it and remained kneeling before her, so that he was looking up into her face. His eyes were big and worried. “Whatever you need. Felicity, I just wanted to apologize for springing that stuff on you last week. I mean, first kissing you - which was totally inappropriate, which I _know_ , and then freezing you out, which only made it worse - and then dumping my whole story on you, I mean, that probably didn’t help--”

Felicity wondered if this was what she sounded like when she was nervous.

“But mostly I need to apologize for telling you about, you know, my project. I mean, I’m not really sorry for it - I _did_ want to tell you about it -- but I’m not really sorry for the kiss, either. Unless you are.” He paused to think about it, “Actually, no, I’m still not. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for a long time. Sorry, my legs are falling asleep.” He stood up and pulled a chair over so that they were sitting face to face, their knees almost touching.

“You haven’t known me a long time,” said Felicity.

“What?”

“You said you’ve been wanting to kiss me for a long time. You haven’t _known_ me a long time.” Her voice was flat. She knew that she wasn’t acting normal. She couldn’t remember what normal was.

“Felicity, I’ve known you long enough. I know I want to kiss you again.” She started,  pulling back, and he held up his hand. “It’s OK, I’m not going to try anything. For one thing, it’s the middle of the workday and your assistant is watching us.” Felicity followed Ray’s nod, to the glass separating her office from Gerry’s desk. Gerry, who was indeed sitting at his desk, staring at them, gave an awkward finger wave. Ray turned back to Felicity.

“For another, you’re not yourself right now. I don’t know what you’re going through, but I want to help you get through it. And then - when you’re _you_ again, Felicity, bright and brilliant and wonderful, however long that takes - then I’m going to kiss you again. Until you’re breathless.” He stood up. “If that’s OK.  In the meantime, I really would like your help with that project I mentioned last week.”

He was gone before she could think of a response. Dammit. She had had a speech all planned, about vigilantism and danger and responsibility and healthy grief and then he’d come out with the whole kissing speech, which had completely derailed her.

Last week, she had _wanted_ Ray to kiss her. He was a hell of a kisser. And he made her feel…. good. Not like Oliver, who could make her feel scared and frustrated and furious and alone. Ray made her feel desired, special. Happy. She had wanted that, and him. Last week.

Now, she wanted nothing but to be left alone.  She picked up her phone and dialed Gerry’s extension, and watched as he picked up. “Hey, Gerry?”

“Good morning, Ms. Smoak! What can I do for you?” His voice was bright and he was clearly trying to pretend that he had not just been spying on her.

“Can you see about getting some blinds installed on these windows?”

 

********************************************

 

Thea looked over the invoices from the morning’s deliveries. Again. Her head ached and she could never seem to think straight these days. After coming up from the basement and staring oddly at her for a few moments, Roy had gone to check the stock room. It was just as well - she didn’t feel like talking.

Her cell phone rang, sending another current of pain through her head. She answered with gritted teeth. “Hello?”

“Babe!” The single word seemed to clang and echo in her head.

Thea closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Connor...Don’t call me that.”

Connor laughed. He loved when she got annoyed.  “Listen, I’m gonna be a little late tonight.” 

“What? No! Connor, you were late last night, and the night before that - Roy had to cover for you.”

Connor snorted. “That _is_ a catastrophe. Better keep the doors closed til I get there, babe.”

Actually, just as he had been effectively double-checking that Verdant’s vendors were paid in full, Roy had covered the DJ booth admirably. He hadn’t had Connor’s flash and magnetism, but he was solid and got people on the dance floor. When she had asked him where he’d learned to DJ, he had just shrugged and said, “I did a lot of things to get by before I met you.”

The pulsing in Thea’s head reached a crescendo.  “I can’t just ‘keep the doors closed,’ Connor. That’s not how this works.  This is my business, and you’re supposed to be a part of it.”

“Relax, Thea.  As long as I’m spinning, I’ll have them lined up at the door. You know that.”

It was true. Since Connor had started working there, Verdant’s profits had doubled. It was nearly back to where it had been before she had closed it down. Still… she didn’t like how she felt when Connor was around. How the _club_ felt when Connor was around. It was wild, like barely suppressed chaos.

“Fine. Connor - stay after tonight, OK? I need to talk to you.”

“Sure, babe. I always stay after… you know that.” His voice was caressing and made her stomach turn. Lately, with the music still playing long after the club closed, she had been finding herself dragging him back in the stock room - and last night, she had very nearly invited him to come home with her. Since things ended with Roy, she had been on her own, and she liked it that way.  But somehow, when Connor was there…. she forgot to think. She forgot to do anything. She had never felt this way with Roy, not even during the most intense times - she had loved him, but she had never lost herself in him. And he had never made her feel like this - ashamed and out of control.

That was it, then. Tonight she would end it with Connor. The club would be fine with a different DJ - maybe Roy wouldn’t mind covering until they found someone. He wasn’t a fan of Connor, anyway. Thea didn’t think Roy would like anyone she was hooking up with, but she knew his real problem with Connor was the way he treated her.  Come to think of it, that was Thea’s biggest problem with Connor, too.

That night, she stood leaning against the bar with her arms crossed, waiting for him to finish his show. The floor was packed, as usual, and she began to have doubts… especially when he began spinning. His music just made her feel so _alive,_ so light - she hadn’t felt that way in so long, not since before…. when? Before the yacht sank, probably.  Back before Oliver died, and somehow still found his way home.  She wanted to hit the dance floor, and even found herself drifting away from the bar until Roy grabbed her by the arm and spun her to face him. “Hey, what’s with you lately?”

Thea blinked and met his gaze. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, for one thing, those customers have been waiting for their drinks for like ten minutes.” The drinks were sitting on the counter where Thea had made them and then gotten distracted by the music. The ice was melted and the young couple looked pissed. She sighed and started over. “Sorry,” she called over to them. “On the house.” That seemed to lighten their mood.

“What?” She asked Roy, defensively, when she saw him watching her. “So I’m trying to relax a little. You’re always off hanging out with Mr. Diggle - _not_ a friendship I understand, by the way -- and Oliver’s off trying to find himself on a beach somewhere. Why aren’t I allowed to have any fun?”

“You’re allowed to have fun, Thea. It’s just that…. this doesn’t look like much fun. It looks like you’re always either high or hung over. I’ve been there, and take it from me, it doesn’t get any more fun from here.”

Thea bristled. “Roy, I don’t even _drink_ anymore, let alone do anything harder. I haven’t been high in… “ she thought of that night in the car, headlights flashing by like strobe lights, and something nagged at the back of her mind. “...in a long time. I’m just tired. I’m all alone, trying to get this club off the ground again, and I work all the time…” _Especially since lately, I’ve been having to do everything twice after I screw it up the first time._

Roy frowned. “You’re not alone, Thea. You’ve got me, and you’ve got…” He swallowed. “You’re not alone.”

Thea sighed.  “I know. You’re right. I know you’ve been covering my butt lately. Look, I’m going to make some changes, OK? Starting tonight. I’m getting rid of Connor.”

Roy looked startled. “Oh yeah? I thought you dug him.”

Thea instinctively looked toward the DJ booth and swallowed back a sudden wave of nausea as Connor caught her gaze and winked.  “I dig what he does for the club. But there’s something about him - the tone he sets, or something. I swear people have been getting high in here, and I can’t figure out how they’re getting the drugs in." 

Roy looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, I’d noticed that too, but I just thought you and Connor…”

Thea laughed a short, sharp laugh. “You thought - what? That I was running drugs through here with my new sleazeball boyfriend?” 

“Thea, I-”

“Is that what you think of me now, Roy? After everything?”

“Thea, _no._ I didn’t think you were running drugs, just maybe… turning a blind eye while Connor did.”

“Wow. So… that _is_ what you think of me.” Thea felt empty. Alone. She had left Starling City so that she would never have to feel this way again… and now she was back, and feeling as wounded as ever.

“You’ve changed, Thea. I know that you’ve changed. You’re not…. _my_ Thea anymore. And that’s OK, because I want you to do what you need to do to feel strong, to be able to trust again, so that someday maybe….” He saw the look on her face, “Or maybe not. Either way, I want you to do what you’ve got to do. Even if that means being someone that I don’t know anymore.”

Thea felt like screaming. How did everyone else make this look so easy? How did they feel one thing and live another and not split down the middle? She wanted to tell Roy that the old Thea was still in there, huddled inside her like a refugee, too scared and hurt to speak up. When she saw the arrows under Roy’s bed and knew that the one thing that had to be real -- Roy and how they felt about each other -- was just another lie, that girl lay down and never got back up. Not just Roy’s Thea, but _Thea’s_ Thea - the girl that felt more like her than this new, cold, warrior ever would.

But the warrior was real, too. The warrior had taken care of her when she couldn’t take care of herself. Merlyn had given her that. And he had told her the truth. That was what she was holding onto now.

“Well, I am going to do what I’ve got to do. Starting tonight. And don’t waste your time worrying about me - I can handle myself. And my club.”

Roy put his hands up in mock surrender and turned back to the cash register.

The last customers were laughing and stumbling out of the club as she waited for Connor to come find her, as promised. She locked the door as the staff began sweeping and loading the dishwasher, still energized from the crowd that night.  Switching on his automated playlist, Connor bounded off his platform toward Thea, wet with sweat and soaring high from another show. She had to hold herself back from throwing her arms around his neck when he reached her. What was _wrong_ with her? One moment he disgusted her, and the next she couldn’t get enough of him.

Thea ran a hand through her hair and deliberately folded her arms. “Look, Connor, this isn’t going to work out.”

It took a moment for him to register what she was saying. Then his eyes narrowed.  

“Don’t be stupid, Thea. Without me, this club would be a ghost town.”

“I doubt it. But I’m willing to take the chance. You’re late, you’re rude, and I don’t like your style. I don’t like what you do to my club.”

“ _Your_ club?” Connor hissed. “Bitch, this is _my_ club. I _own_ this dance floor.”

“Everything OK?” Thea hadn’t heard Roy come up behind her. Despite his casual tone, Thea could feel the heat coming off his body and the tension in his muscles. She turned on him.

“Roy, I said I can handle this!” He took a step back but didn’t take his eyes off of Connor.

Thea turned back to Connor, who had masked his momentary rage with a lazy smile.

“Connor, I know you’re running drugs through here. We’re lucky no one’s gotten hurt, and I’m not going to wait until someone does. So get out of my club.”

To her surprise, Connor threw his head back and laughed.  “ _Running_ drugs? Babe, please. I don’t have to _run_ anything. I _am_ the drug.”

The headache was back. “Oh my _God. Seriously,_ you need to get over yourself.”

Connor grinned. “Thea, music is physical. It’s waves of sound, which push on your ears, which pushes on your brain. The trick is figuring out which waves push on which neural pathways.”

Thea sighed, and suddenly felt very tired. “Connor, are you high?”

“Nope. But you are. And so were at least half the people in this club tonight.  The half that have done Vertigo, to be precise.” 

“ _What?”_ Thea automatically shot out her hand to hold Roy back. She could feel him seething.

“Once you’ve done the drug, the neural pathways exist. I figured out how to use sound waves to trigger them. Why do you think your dance floor has been so full? Club kids, Thea. Most of them have done Vertigo at some point. Just like you, babe.” He gave her a slow grin and lifted his eyebrows. “Why do you think you’ve been so into me lately? When you’re listening to my beats, I _own_ you. Anything I want, you want it too... _Anything._ ”

Roy started to move, but Thea was faster. She grabbed a fistful of Connor’s greasy hair and pulled his head down until it was level with hers. “I _said --”_ and she yanked his head further down, slamming it with her knee, then, as he raised his hands to cover his gushing nose, lashed out to kick him, once in the gut and once on his left knee, and heard a satisfying crack, “don’t - call - me - _babe._ ” She stepped back while he dragged himself to his feet, bloody and shaking. “And _get the fuck out of my club.”_  

He laughed, but the arrogance behind it was forced. “Big mistake, bitch. You were gonna be my girl. I was gonna take _care_ of you. Now?” He lowered his hands and the blood gushed down the front of his shirt, but all Thea could see were his eyes. They were cold - as cold as anything she had ever wished to be. She shivered.

“Now you can watch with everyone else while I _burn this city to the ground.”_


	3. Chapter 3

Tommy led Oliver to a rocky mound but, as Oliver started to climb, Tommy stopped him and pushed a few branches aside. Suddenly there was a narrow opening where there hadn’t been before. Once they had pushed through - Tommy ducking his head, Oliver scraping his against the rock ledge above -- the space opened out and they were moving on smooth, carved rock that descended gradually until the opening was a sliver of light far behind and above them. Oliver closed his eyes so that they would adjust faster to the dark, but when he opened them, Tommy had located a lantern on a ledge in wall. Its anemic glow barely illuminated the packed earth walls of the tunnel around them. His eyes on the growing stain on Oliver’s blanket, Tommy paused and crouched down.

“We can rest here. The League doesn’t know about this place; it’s a secret entrance to an old mine,” said Tommy. “The first nation people around here have been mining it for hundreds of years.”

Oliver sat next to Tommy, watching the entrance for any shadows or changes in the light. Tommy continued, almost nervously, as if he was afraid of allowing too much silence between them.

“Then, about 60 years ago, the government sold the land out from under them. So they turned to the League for help. They were desperate - their land was being gutted. The League came in and drove the new owners away -  by killing most of them. But they didn’t give the land back to the Kawani. Instead, they stayed, and claimed it as their own ceremonial land. When the Kawani objected, there was a slaughter. Hundreds of people were killed.”

Oliver noticed the edge in Tommy’s voice, and wondered what else had changed about his old friend. Tommy had never expressed a sense of social justice before.

“After that, the Kawani went underground. Literally. They live mostly in these tunnels, coming above-ground to hunt and harvest what they need. The League thinks that they left decades ago, but this is their land - without it, they wouldn’t be the Kawani.” His face hard and tight, Tommy looked meaningfully at Oliver. “"This is what happens when titans clash, Oliver. You, my father, the League - people with big ideas. Ordinary people suffer."

The camaraderie of the fight in the clearing had passed. Anger flooded Oliver like blood returning to a sleeping limb. "You know, Tommy, I just saw you take out three guys with one hand. What makes us so different?"

Tommy narrowed his eyes. "I'm not a killer, Oliver. If I were, the League would never have cast me out. You think they cared that I only have one arm? They cared about the same thing my dad cared about - that I wouldn’t kill. The difference between you and me is that I taught myself to fight in order to survive. To get home. And once I'm there, I'm going to forget it all. I'm going to forget that I ever knew how to fight."

Oliver leaned his head against the stone behind him as the anger drained out of him, leaving fatigue and a strange sadness. Had he ever believed that? That once he got home, he would never again need to fight? His voice, when he finally spoke, was weary.

“Let me know how that goes.”

Oliver took off his blanket and pulled at a frayed end until some thread came loose. He began to tease and twist it until he had a six-inch long coarse length of wool, then snapped it from the blanket and put in in his mouth.

Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

Oliver spoke around the thread. “We can’t do much if I keep losing blood. You don’t have a needle on you, do you?” Without waiting for an answer, he took out a small, slim twig that he had snapped off a young tree outside.

“No. What are you doing?”

Oliver knew it wasn’t fair, but it was a little bit satisfying to watch Tommy’s face go pale as he used the rough stone wall, and then his own thumbnail, to shape the edge of the twig into a progressively smaller and sharper point. “What do you think I’m doing?” 

“Oh Jesus, Oliver.” Tommy closed his eyes as Oliver removed the thread from his mouth and tied it firmly to one end of the makeshift needle, and peeled the wet blanket away from the wound. It made a sucking sound. Tommy gagged.

“Oh, come on. You did this on your own a few days ago.”

“With an _actual needle._ Plus, I got drunk first.”

“I hope you poured some of the alcohol on the wound, too.” Oliver sniffed. “It doesn’t smell infected, at least.” He spat on his hands and rubbed them together.

“Seriously? This isn’t gross enough as it is?”

“Saliva is mildly antibiotic. Infection is as much a risk as blood loss. Maybe more.” Oliver winced as he punctured his skin. “ _Fuck._ ” It wasn’t the first time he had given himself stitches, but the blunt needle was a new experience.

Tommy swallowed. “Do you need me to do it for you?” 

Oliver relented. “No. Go back up to the entrance and see if there’s any sign of the League. Leave the light.”

Tommy did, but returned quickly. “It’s dark. The League doesn’t like these woods after dark. They’ve had a few accidents, courtesy of the Kawani resistance, and they’ve gotten a bit… superstitious about it.”

“The League is scared of the dark?”

“Not exactly. They just prefer to avoid it around here, if they can. They’ll probably wait for the cold to finish us off and come to collect us tomorrow.”

Oliver tied off the last stitch and again leaned his head against the wall behind him. “Where are we headed?”

“It’s hard to describe. I’d rather show you. But we can rest for a few minutes. You know, just until my nausea passes.”

Oliver closed his eyes. He felt his mind drifting with fatigue and blood loss. “I hope you do.”

“What?”

“I hope you do forget how to fight.”

Tommy was silent for so long that Oliver wondered if he had fallen asleep. He was only a shadow behind the flickering lantern. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, less sharp, than Oliver had heard it in a long time.  

“Yeah. Me too.”

In the dark, with his eyes closed, Oliver was reminded, absurdly, of their childhood sleepovers. After Tommy’s mother had died, they spent every weekend at Oliver’s house. They would lie in their sleeping bags in the dark most of the night, drifting in and out of sleep, talking. In the morning, it was hard to remember what had been said and what was a dream.

“They don’t call me the Hood anymore.” It seemed important to say, for some reason. 

“Back to the Vigilante?" 

“No. The Arrow.” 

Another long silence. “Do you think all superheros give this much thought to their name?” Tommy asked, sleepily. It was the kind of question 11-year-old Tommy might have asked.   

“So I’m a superhero? I thought I was a killer.”

When he spoke again, Tommy sounded like he had aged several decades in a few seconds. “No, Oliver, you’re a hero. There’s no doubt about that. I’m just not sure whether you’re a good man.”

The comment was oddly without rancor. Oliver didn’t respond. Tommy continued, as though thinking aloud.

 “My father thinks that he’s a good man. He killed hundreds of people. He killed your father. But through it all, I’m sure he believed he was a good man.”  

“They were best friends, once.” Oliver shivered. How could friendship become so twisted? He thought about Slade. Was it possible that that could ever happen with Tommy?

Tommy stood up. He stooped down and reached out to help Oliver up. Their shadows danced and twisted on the in the flickering light, battling, embracing, falling and rising again. His voice hoarse in with smoke from the lamp, Tommy answered the question that Oliver hadn’t asked. “Never, Oliver. Do you hear me? Never.”

 

*******************************************

 

The light from the TV made everything look blue. Felicity liked that - it made her feel like she was curled up on the inside of an ocean wave, insulated from the world outside. In the blue light, Felicity would make coffee and go to work. Her phone would keep ringing, because Roy and Digg wouldn’t give up, but she would close her blinds and the computer light would be another wave to curl up in. The sun was out. A long time ago, there had been another Felicity who had liked when the sun was out. That Felicity would have taken the long route from the office to Verdant on a day like this, to pick up coffee and scones from the good bakery, the ones that Roy liked. Oliver was always telling her to vary her route, anyway, for safety.

That was a bad thought. Felicity went to the bathroom to put on makeup while the coffee brewed. Pink. It was everywhere. Felicity liked pink. She always had. Her mother had always told her that it wasn't flattering on her, that it made her looked washed out, but Felicity liked it because it was a happy color. Even on days when she was gray inside, she had been able to make it better with pink.

She swept her hand across the sink. Pink tubes and powders clattered into the trash can and flew across the floor like roaches scattering in the light. Felicity put on some lip balm and mascara and turned away from the mirror. 

There was a knock at the door. Felicity poured the coffee. She hadn't been sleeping much lately. She wondered why. Her mind shied away from that thought. Lately, her mind had been a maze, twisting and turning back on itself, and she had been steering clear of blind turns, peering carefully around every corner. There was a beast at the center of the maze, and she had to be careful not to find it.

The knock came again, louder. Felicity put a piece of bread in the toaster and pushed it down. When had she last eaten?

The door shuddered, buckled, and burst open. Digg stood on the doorway, panting.

“You should really get a stronger door. That's not safe.”

“What are you doing here, Digg?” Felicity hadn't moved. She didn't feel surprised or afraid. She wasn't sure anything could scare her ever again.

“You aren't picking up your phone, Felicity.”

“I've been busy.” 

“Well, clear your schedule. We've got a problem.” Digg strode over to the old clock radio that Felicity kept on her counter and switched it on. Thumping bass filled the kitchen.

Felicity raised her eyebrows at him.

“It's everywhere. Some guy calling himself DJ Vertigo. Roy says he was working Vertigo until Thea fired him.”

“Yeah, I've heard him. He's good. So?”

“So, there's something wrong with the music. It's making people go crazy. Half the city is wandering around high, and the other half is breaking and looting everything in sight.”

“So call the cops, Digg.”

“Felicity, are you serious? Have you looked outside lately?”

“Of course. To go to work and get home.”

“And have you seen any cops around? The ones who can still walk a straight line are totally overwhelmed just trying to contain the chaos.”

“I haven't really noticed, Digg. It's not my job to keep track of emergency services.”

Digg started to snap something back, and then he looked at Felicity for a moment. He took in the pale face; the baggy, mismatched clothes; the hollow eyes. The hand the held the coffee cup trembled ever so slightly.

“Hey.” His voice was gentle, careful. “How you doing?”

“Digg, I don't have time for therapy. I have to get to work.”

Digg cleared his throat, but when spoke, it was still rough. “I'm not so great, either.”

The beast was coming closer. She could feel it breathing. It was coming for her and if it found her it would tear her apart until there was nothing left.

“The thing is, though, when he brought us into this – his mission – it stopped being just his. I told him at the beginning that I wasn't signing on to be his sidekick. We needed this just as much as he did – and the city needed us as much as it needed him. He's gone, and I know that hurts. I know that makes it hard to get up in the morning. Hard to breathe. But we're still here, and the city still needs us.”

The toast popped. Felicity started, terror in her eyes. She remembered now. This was what fear felt like. Like the beast around the next corner, waiting.

“We can stay here. Frozen. While the city burns around us. We can wait for him to come back and save us. Or we can admit that he's not coming back, and we can save ourselves.”

Outside, a car alarm went off. _Not coming back._ Felicity couldn't breathe.

“He's not coming back, Felicity. He's not coming to save us from this.”

_Save me from this._ It was a prayer.

“We need you. Roy and I are going to do this, but I don't think we can do it without you. If you won't do it for the city, do it for us.” Digg came close to Felicity and bent down so that he could see her eyes, searching for what remained of her in the ruins of grief. “Please.”

The walls of the maze trembled, cracked, and shattered. Felicity stood alone and faced the beast: Herself, without Oliver. Tearstained, broken, hopeless; still here, with him gone.

She let out her breath in one long, shaky exhalation, picked up her phone, and dialed a number.

“Ray? I need to borrow your suit.”

************************************************************************

 

“Absolutely not.” Roy launched himself out of his chair and began to pace.

“We need him. And he won't let us use the suit without him.”

“That's ridiculous, Felicity. We've been just fine so far, without playing dress-up in some futuristic unitard.” 

There was a moment of silence. Digg cleared his throat and looked down, pretending to be occupied in cleaning his gun. Felicity cocked an eyebrow and glanced meaningfully at the case holding Arsenal's artfully displayed maroon and black leather.

Roy's face reddened. “Look, that's different. That's just to disguise our identities. We don't _depend_ on the suit for our survival.”

Exasperated, Felicity turned to Digg. He held his hands up and backed up a step.

“Don't look at me. I do just fine in the kind of suit that goes with a tie.”

“ _Look._ Digg came to me and said you needed my help – and he's right. You'd get your asses kicked without me.”

Roy started to object, but was silenced by a meaningful glance from Digg.

“But the problem is, you might get your asses kicked with me, too. We need a secret weapon, now that... now.”

“She's right.” Digg spoke up. “I don't like it anymore than you do, Roy, but this suit sounds like it might give us an edge. And if we're going to do this without Oliver, an edge is what we need. But Felicity, we can't bring Ray into it – we don't know anything about him. He could get us all killed.”

“I can't believe you told him as much as you did. We don't even tell Thea, but your new boyfriend is OK?”

Felicity turned on him, but Digg spoke up before she could. “ _Shut up,_ Roy.”

Felicity took a deep breath. “No, Digg, it's OK. I'd be mad too, if I thought that you guys were spreading our secrets all over town. But it's not like that, Roy. I made it sound like I was working alone. I didn't tell him anything about Oliver or the Arrow. And I have no intention of letting him find out.”

“How are we going to prevent that?”

“I need him to bring the suit here. I told him he'd be the one wearing it. Then, once he gets here and shows it to me, we'll get it away from him. Digg can wear it. Ray will never see either of you and he'll never be the wiser. He'll probably fire me, but I can handle that.” Felicity stuck her chin out, defiantly. “This is more important.” Digg caught Roy's eye. It was the most life she'd shown since they'd gotten the news about Oliver.

“OK, except now he knows where we are. And he's seen me and Digg because I assume that you're not the one getting the suit off of him? Unless this has a whole Mata Hari angle that you haven't shared with us.”

“Well, sort of.” Felicity opened a drawer in her desk and rooted around in it for a moment before pulling out a syringe and a small bottle.

“Are you kidding me? What, you keep a little poison next to the spare ink cartridge?”

“It's not poison! It's a mild sedative. I mean, fairly mild.” Felicity looked guilty. “Look, I just like to be prepared, OK? After you went all... mirakuru... and with everyone always needing stitches and everything... it just doesn't seem totally out the realm of possibility that I might need to perform, like, an emergency appendectomy in here one of these days.”

Digg took the syringe that she had been waving around for emphasis. “What else do you have stocked in here? Ebola?”

“Of course not! Just... well... some more of that pit viper venom. And the antidote to the pit viper venom. And some multi-spectrum antibiotics, anti-virals, lidocaine….. And also some arsenic, just because you never know. A lot of clean syringes, obviously. And Digg knows about the defibrillator.” Felicity saw Roy's and Digg's dropped jaws and widened her eyes innocently. “Just in case of emergencies! You have to admit, we have a _lot_ of emergencies.”

“Jesus, Felicity! Where do you keep all of this stuff?”

Felicity nodded to the corner where a dorm-style refrigerator was hooked up. “In the mini-fridge.”

Roy looked a little panicked. “I thought that was for snacks! I put sodas in there!”

“Yeah, I took them out. You don't really want to mix up the viper venom and the Mountain Dew. My point is, I'll be able to keep Ray out of the way without getting you guys involved.”

“Yeah, but will you be able to do it without killing him?” Digg carefully put the syringe on a high shelf. Felicity couldn't help but notice that it was one that she couldn't reach. “Roy is right, Felicity. This plan does seem a little....”

“Insane. It seems insane.” Roy crossed his arms.

“Well, what's the other option? We don't even _have_ another plan. Anyone know where this guy is?”

“DJ Vertigo.”

“What?” 

Roy rolled his eyes. “He calls himself DJ Vertigo. He's all over the radio stations. He keeps doing fake radio countdowns where his mixes are in all of the top 20 spots. It's a little sad, actually.” He tightened his jaw. “Or it would be, if he weren't a dangerous psychopath with mind control abilities.”

“Speaking of which, how's Thea?” Digg raised his eyes meaningfully to the ceiling. “The music affects her, right?”

“It affects anyone who's ever taken Vertigo. So yeah. She's been keeping away from the radio. Last I saw her, she was headed home to her apartment – said she was going to lay low. I figure, the less she's involved, the better. I've never taken Vertigo, so I'm safe, and so is Felicity, but Digg...”

“I know. I've been careful so far but we need to keep in mind that I could be a liability.” Digg rubbed his hand roughly across his forehead. “Another argument in favor of having a back-up plan.”

“Or any plan at all, really.” Felicity sighed. “Look, we're talking in circles. We need to figure out what we're going to do.”

Roy looked warily at Felicity. “I'm sorry to say it, but....what would Oliver do?”

He and Digg were both relieved to see Felicity smile wryly. “He'd growl, 'Felicity, get me his location right now!' Then he'd glare at me, grab his bow, strike a pose, and storm out.”

Digg grinned. “He did have real flair for drama.”

Felicity's smile faded. None of them were used to the past tense yet.

Felicity shook her head. “We need to figure out where Connor is, and we need to get to him and stop him. I might be able to triangulate his location if I can figure out what he's using to hijack radio frequencies, but then it's going to be up to you guys.”

Digg pounded the table in frustration. “Wrong. It's going to be up to Roy. We don't know how I'm going to react to the music and we can't risk it.”

“I can handle that guy,” said Roy, but Felicity was already shaking her head.

“That's stupid, Roy. What if he has people with him? We know that the music makes people susceptible to his command. We don't know what we're sending you into. I can come, but we all know...:”

“ _No.”_ Roy and Digg spoke together, Digg low and emphatic, Roy almost growling.

“... yikes. Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. I was _going_ to say, we all know I'm not great in a fight. So that leaves the suit. Either it will have some kind of noise-blocking capability that Digg can use, or it will give you a better chance in a fight, Roy. Either way, it's our best shot.”

Roy was silent. The prospect of taking Felicity into battle must have shocked him into considering it.

“How do we know that the suit will work?”

“We don't. But Ray is brilliant. Seriously, guys, he is the kind of brilliant that people invented the word “brilliant” to describe.” Felicity looked gravely back and forth from Digg to Roy. “I would trust him with my life. I would trust him with _your_ lives.”

Digg watched her closely. She looked hollowed out and exhausted, and sometimes, when she didn't think anyone was looking, she seemed to drift off someplace else. But there was color in her face, and life in her eyes, and she looked like Felicity again.

“Good enough for me,” he said.

“OK,” said Roy. “Where do we find this guy?”

“He's meeting me upstairs in 20 minutes.” Digg glared at her, but his heart wasn’t in it. She shrugged, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “I was pretty sure I was going to be able to convince you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Felicity hadn't known it would be like this. She was smiling and laughing, working and planning and breathing, and Oliver was gone. It hurt all the time, but she was making her way from moment to moment, like stones leading across a stream of unbearable grief. She couldn't think about the stream. She just had to keep walking from stone to stone, knowing that every step was carrying her farther from the opposite bank and the life she had known, the one in which Oliver was coming home to her. She didn't want to move forward, but she couldn't go back, and she couldn't let herself fall, because Digg and Roy needed her. So she would keep walking the stones. She would get the suit away from Ray, and then she would find DJ Vertigo and stop him, and then... and then there would be another stone.

Roy and Digg were at the bar, trying to look inconspicuous, when Ray walked through the door. Felicity got up to greet him.

“Is this place even open?” Ray held out a chair for Felicity and then took a seat across from her. 

“No, but my friend owns it. She had to take off for a little while and she asked me to look after it.” 

“You're friends with Thea Queen?”

Felicity kicked herself. Everyone knew Thea owned Verdant. She had never been good at espionage, and she wasn't at her best now. Neither were Roy and Digg. Usually able to melt into shadows and blend into any crowd, now they hovered awkwardly around the bar, unwilling to take their eyes off her for a moment.

“Sort of. It's... complicated.”

“So the club is sort of closed, you're sort of looking after it, and those are... bartenders?”

Felicity glared at Digg and Roy, who tried to look interested in polishing glasses.

“Yeah, sort of. Look, did you bring it?”

Ray patted the black gym back that he'd slung across his chair. “What changed your mind?”

“All of this stuff with DJ Vertigo... you were right. The city needs help.”

“And you want to help me do this?”

“Yeah. I can locate him for you. And then you'll... what, swoop in? Fly in? What can the suit do?”

“Oh, it has a built-in jetpack. I thought I'd just point myself in the right direction and knock him over.”

“Seriously?”

“Felicity... _no.”_ Ray's face grew serious. “I know you don't believe me, but I have given this a lot of thought. This isn't a comic strip. I'm talking about serious military-grade technology – powerful artillery, cutting edge weapons-resistant fabric, and some science-y stuff that I don't understand, but I do know how to use.” He grinned. “ _And_ a jetpack.” He reached out for her hand. “I'll show you someday, but right now we don't have time. I'll get into the suit, and you get to work figuring out how to find the bad guy.”

“But... is it complicated to use? What if you get there and panic and forget where all the switches are?” Felicity thought that she was being fairly obvious, but Ray's eyes softened at her concern for him.

“I've practiced. A lot. And the suit is... I'm not sure how to explain it. It's smart. It's intuitive. I'm not saying that it's sentient, but sometimes I could swear it can read my mind. The programming is unbelievable – it analyzes situational context and provides options. Once you get used to the command system – it's a combination of gaze and digit manipulation – it becomes like second nature.”

“OK.” Felicity stood up and put her hands in her pockets. Her left hand curved around the full syringe. This was the difficult part. Not sticking him with it, but getting close enough. Seduction was not really her forte. She stepped closer to him. “I'm really... glad we're doing this.”

He smiled and bent his head down so that his lips were close to hers. She took the syringe out of her pocket. “I am too.”

It happened in an instant. He grabbed her wrist and spun her around so that she was pressed against him and the point of the syringe was against her own neck. Roy had vaulted the bar at the first movement, with Digg not far behind, but both had frozen when they saw the syringe. Neither had been confident in her dose calculation, but they had been willing to gamble when it had been intended for Ray.

His voice was gentle. “You don't have much experience sneaking up on people with syringes, do you?”

“Actually, you might be surprised,” Felicity gasped.

“Felicity, how stupid do you think I am?” She had to admit that he would probably be pretty good in a fight. The pulse in his wrist, pressed against her chest, was steady and even. Her own breath was coming in ragged gasps as she tried to pull away from the point of the needle.

“It's just a sedative, Ray! It wasn't going to hurt you. Stick me with it if you don't believe me.” She hoped that he wouldn't. 

“Why are you after the suit? Who do you work for? DJ Vertigo?” 

She was so surprised by the accusation that a gasp of laughter escaped. “Wait, what? Of course not! Think about it, Ray, I've known you for months; he's just shown up lately. Why would I work for him?”

“Maybe you're his girlfriend. Maybe you want power. All I know is that you've been acting really off lately.... maybe you've been getting high on your own product.” 

It was a ridiculous idea... she and Vertigo sitting in a dark room somewhere together, steepling their fingertips and plotting world domination via music. “Ray, think about it. If I were going to try to take over the world, don't you think I'd have a better way of doing it? This is... kind of a stupid plot. And I'm pretty smart. I know you know that.”

Ray paused. “OK, why have you been acting so out of it lately?”

“I lost someone. Someone important to me.”

The pressure on her neck eased. She knew he was thinking of his fiancee. Digg had been easing towards them slowly, and with Ray distracted, he saw his chance. He whipped a butter knife through the air. Felicity felt the breath of movement against her cheek and saw the glint out of the corner of her eye as it caught Ray on the forearm. It might not have been enough, but Felicity dug her elbow backwards and, when Ray grunted, dropped into a crouch as Roy pulled his bow from behind the bar and loosed an arrow into Ray's shoulder. By that time, Digg was behind Ray and had his arms twisted behind him in a way that was making Ray's eyes water. In one smooth motion, he yanked the arrow out of Ray's shoulder, grabbed the syringe, spun him around, and pressed it against Ray's throat.

“How do you like it?” he growled.

“Wait! Don't inject him!” Felicity was on her knees, digging through the gym back. Which held... gym clothes. No suit. “It's not here!”  Ray grinned and spoke between heaving breaths. “Like I said, I'm not stupid.” He grunted as Digg jerked his arms up higher. “Do what you gotta do, man. I'm not saying anything.”

Roy shattered a bottle against the bar. “We'll see about that.” His eyes glowed red in the light from the exit sign as he approached.

“Roy, stop. _Stop._ We can't do this. What are you going to do, torture him?”

“If I have to. If that's what it takes to stop DJ Vertigo.”

Ray's eyes narrowed. “Wait. You're trying to steal my suit to stop that guy?”

Felicity stood up to face him. Digg relaxed his grip to ease the pain, but not so much that Ray would be able to move an inch. “Yes.”

“But … that's what I'm trying to do. I don't understand. Why are you trying to steal the suit? Why not just work with me?”

“Because we don't know you.” Roy had moved silently to stand behind Felicity. “Because you're an amateur. You've got a suit and, what, you're going out to save the world? I'm not willing to gamble on that, man.”

Ray looked disbelievingly at Roy. “ _I'm_... an amateur? How old are you, 12? What were _you_ going to do with the suit?”

Roy shook his head in disgust. “Forget it. Forget it, Felicity. Let him go. We'll do it without him.”

Digg gave Ray a little shake. “This never happened. Understand?” He dropped Ray's arms and turned away as if Ray had ceased to exist. Ray stood, stunned and bleeding.

“You should get that looked at.” Felicity didn't want to leave him like this, but there was work to do.

“Felicity, wait! You called me today and said that you wanted to work together to catch DJ Vertigo. What's changed?”

“Nothing's changed, Ray. I never meant to work with you. I needed the suit.”

“What, to give to your boyfriend?”

“Why do you keep accusing people of being my boyfriend?”

Ray looked sheepish. “I don't know. It's kind of a default position, I guess.”

“Well... yes. To give to Roy. Or Digg.”

“But why them? Why not just trust me?”

She couldn't tell him. “Because I know them. Digg has military experience. And Roy is... good in a fight. Ray, I know that you're strong and smart and that you've been training and you understand the technology but... you don't know what you're getting into.”

“And these guys do?”

Digg spoke up. “Take it from me. You can have the best weapons in the world, and without the skill to use them, they're only good for getting you killed.”

Ray threw his hands up in the air and then winced at the pain in his shoulder. “Exactly! If you tried to use my suit, it _would_ have ended up getting you killed. But I know how to use it, and I can use it to help!" 

They heard the smash and tinkle of broken glass across the street. The sound of alarms and sirens was becoming a constant in the background.

“Screw this,” Roy muttered, and started towards the back of the club. “We're wasting time.”

Ray seemed to think for a moment. “You're right,” he said. “We are.” In one swift movement, he grabbed the gym bag, upended the contents on the floor, and turned it inside out. Or at least – that was what it looked like he did. But somehow, in the process of being turned inside out, the bag ceased to be a bag and became a black suit. It looked simple, if a little silly – Roy hadn't been far off when he called it a unitard.

“You sneaky bastard.” Digg shook his head.

Roy started towards Ray, but Ray held up a hand. “Don't bother. It's programmed for me. If you put it on, you'll just be a dude in a black bodysuit. You'll look ridiculous.” He paused, and looked around. “Um... is there a place where I can change?”

“Oh, they usually just use the bathroom.” Felicity gestured towards the back.

“...'They?'”

“We, I mean. We. When we have to change. Which we don't. We don't... change here. Ever. Why would we?” Roy glared at her. She grabbed Ray's arm.

“Ray, wait. I know that Roy doesn't always put things in the best way, but … I don't think you should do this. Give us the suit or don't, but you shouldn't get involved with this.” 

Ray looked at her. “But you're involved with this. Whatever... _this …_ is.”

Felicity couldn't meet his gaze. She looked down. “Yes.”

“Then I am, too.” Ray slung the suit around his neck, looking almost jaunty, and headed for the bathroom. 

Felicity closed her eyes. “That could have gone better.”

“He's going to get himself killed. And us, if we're not careful.” Roy paced back and forth, looking ready to pounce.

“Maybe not.” Surprised, Felicity looked at Digg, who had spoken. “Look, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm not saying that it's a great choice. I'm just saying that it might be our only choice. We don't have a lot of time.”

Roy looked over Felicity's shoulder, and she saw his face tighten. “Wrong. We don't have _any_ time.”

Felicity turned. There was a crowd gathering outside the club. For the most part, they had blank faces, turned towards the front window. Some of them were holding hands, singing, smiling – typical high club kids. But most of them were standing still and simply looked like they were waiting. Felicity locked eyes with a man towards the front of the crowd. She looked for a sign in his face of why he had come – whether he was angry, afraid, or just high. What she saw terrified her. His gaze was blank. There was nothing there. In the past few years, Felicity had looked into the eyes of evil men, insane men, despairing men, violent men. But she had never looked into eyes and seen nothing looking back.

Then, the man smiled. But it wasn't him smiling. His eyes were still blank. It was as though something else, something inside of him looking out, was using his mouth to smile. The hair on the back of Felicity's neck stood on end. Ever so slowly, Digg moved so that he was standing between the man and Felicity, breaking the gaze and the smile.

“Well,” he said. “That was creepy.”

“What are they here for?” Felicity could hear the panic in her voice. She forced herself to take a deep breath. 

“Thea.” Roy's face was pale. “Connor’s obsessed with her. He said that, when you're high on the music, you're susceptible to his suggestions – he said he can make you do whatever he wants.” Roy's mouth curled and his nostrils flared in disgust. “He's sent them here for her.”

“But she's not here!” Felicity bit her lips and immediately wished she had said something more admirable, like: “We'll never let them take her!” 

“He doesn't know that. But if he thinks she's here, he'll stay away from her apartment. We can buy time to find him.”

“How are we going to find him?” The suit wasn't any more impressive on. Ray, coming out of the bathroom, looked like he was dressed for a fencing lesson. He looked down at himself, then back up at Felicity. “Um, I'm …. working on the look of it. That was one of the things I was going to ask your input on." 

“What happened to the suit you showed me? With the carved abs and breastplate and everything?” Felicity tried to keep her tone tactful.

“Oh, yeah, that’s totally what it’s _going_ to look like. Definitely. I just have to work a few kinks out.” Ray beamed at her. “So? Do we have a plan for finding him or what?”

Roy looked at Ray, at Digg, then back at Felicity. “Shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Digg. 

“We have something to show you,” said Felicity.


	5. Chapter 5

They wound deeper down into a maze of tunnels like a beehive. For every tunnel they took there were dozens that they passed by. Oliver could tell by the changing tones of the echoes of their steps that some openings led to large caverns and some to nothing more than a small hidey-hole, and that they sometimes were navigating the edges of large and deep chasms. He wondered what would happen to someone who wandered into the old mines without knowing their way – and how many people had died finding out the answer to precisely that question.

It had been a long while since they had spoken. In the torchlight, Tommy's face was creased with concentration. Soot stains had settled into the lines in his forehead, aging him until he looked hauntingly like his father. 

Tommy stopped abruptly and held out his hand in a warning to Oliver. Oliver came to a stop, silently, and flattened himself against the wall so that anyone seeing Tommy approach would think that he was coming alone.

Tommy made a clucking and growling noise from deep within his throat. It wasn't a human sound. It spoke to something deep within Oliver's mind, of predators in the night, and sent shivers down his spine. 

Tommy was answered by a similar noise, but with a different pattern, far ahead in the dark. To Oliver, it sounded just as ominous, but he could see Tommy's shoulders relax. Clearly it had been the right response. Tommy stepped forward and gestured for Oliver to follow him.

But Oliver had heard what Tommy had not – a sound as familiar to him as his own breath. In the darkness, someone had drawn and notched an arrow. Oliver took one, cautious step forward, then leaped back again as the arrow that he had been expecting whizzed by.

Tommy had hit the ground as soon as the arrow had flown. He shoved Oliver into a blind tunnel and barreled forward himself. Oliver couldn't see him from his hiding spot but heard the ensuing conversation.

“What the ever-loving _hell?!”_

“You have someone with you. I heard him.” It was a woman's voice, cold and composed.

“So? I gave the signal! It was safe! What, you were going to kill us first and ask questions later?”

“I wasn't going to kill _you._ Just him.”

“Jesus, N'sal. He's with me. That isn't enough?” Tommy's voice was shaking, with anger or fear.

“You know that it's not. Who knows why you were bringing him here? Maybe the League offered you something you couldn't refuse. Maybe they were going to send you home to your Laurel.” Oliver could hear the sneer in her voice. 

“N'sal, _shut up.”_

“What, he doesn't know about your one true love? It doesn't matter, anyway. There are things you care about more than our mission. It's only natural that there should be – you didn't grow up in these tunnels, hearing the sobbing ghosts of your ancestors, listening to the stories of what your people have lost from the walking skeletons of your parents and aunts and uncles.”

Tommy sighed. “That's very poetic. I get it, OK? I'm not one of you, I can't be trusted. Except that you already made the choice to trust me, so why do we keep having this conversation?” 

“Because that wasn't my choice.” It was a growl. “Because I would _never_ have made that choice. Because there is nothing you can offer us that's worth the risk.”

“Except insight. And information. And your mother decided that was good enough. So why isn't it for you?”

“My mother is desperate. She doesn't believe that we will win this war in her lifetime. I am not desperate. I don't care how many lifetimes it takes to get back what is ours.”

“Spoken like someone who is young enough to believe that she will live for many lifetimes.” It was a third voice – soft and throaty like the first, but softer, more gentle. A purr rather than a growl. Older. “I will not have this fight again, N'sal. Mr. Merlyn, who is your friend?”

“Is it safe for him to come out?”

“I give you my word.” Oliver could feel the change in the air that happened when weapons were lowered and everyone relaxed slightly.

“His name is Oliver Queen. I wouldn't recommend messing with him, N'sal, even if you wanted to go back on your mother's word.”

“I know who Oliver Queen is. You think I can't handle a spoiled child?” 

“I think you can't handle the man that five years of torture and isolation turned that spoiled child into. Don't be fooled - just because you can kick my ass doesn't mean you can kick his.”

“N'sal.” The older woman's voice was chiding. “You have never been able to see what's right in front of you.”

“ _You_ trust the future of our people to a stranded playboy who will do anything to get back to his silver-spoon life, and you call _me_ blind?”

“I call you blind, yes. When the man they call the Arrow loses a fight to R'as al Ghul and five days later our friend brings a wounded stranger to us, and you assume that all that is there is a spoiled rich child, then I call you blind.” 

N'sal let her breath out in a hiss. “You've brought us the Arrow.” 

Oliver's heart began to beat faster, but Tommy was quick to reply. “I haven't _brought_ you anything. I came here for your help. My friend needs time to heal before we figure out what to do next... I had hoped for your protection. He's not here for you to use in your fight.”

“Good. The last thing we need is a weak fighter who couldn't take on R'as by himself, trying to use us for his vengeance.”

Oliver didn't want to hear anymore. He stepped out. “Well then, I won't trouble you with my vengeance. I don't need your protection, either.”

He didn't know that, in the dark, he seemed to have emerged from nowhere, like a ghost or a god. He only saw the effect on the women standing before him. The younger one, her eyes slanted and her jaw clenched in anger, turned her glare from Tommy to him. She was beautiful – tall, slim, and dark – but that was not the first impression she gave off. The first impression was one of danger. She made Oliver's hands itch for his bow. 

Then, the older woman stepped forward. Oliver had seen family resemblance before, but never like this. This woman was clearly much older than N'sal, but she was no less beautiful. Her face was more open and her movements more graceful. She held out her arms in a gesture that, on anyone else, would have seemed foolishly melodramatic. 

“Whether you need it or not, we offer it. Please. Mr. Merlyn would not have brought you here if he did not believe that you were in desperate need. I know that he does not ask favors lightly.”

This was news to Oliver. He glanced at Tommy, who drew himself up ever so slightly and looked defiantly at Oliver.

“You can leave. I'm sure you memorized the route in?” The corners of N'sal's mouth twitched upwards. It might have been a smile. “Then, if you manage to avoid the League's scouts, it's only about 200 miles to the nearest town. Through the snow.” She looked Oliver up and down. “That won't be an issue, though, because you won't make it that far. Within a week, you'll be dead from infection.” This time, it was definitely a smile. “It will be a fast death. Of course, it won't feel fast.”

Tommy looked beseechingly at Oliver. Oliver didn't move.

N'sal's mother spoke up. “My name is Katherine. I'm the leader of the Kawani, and I know that you think you have no reason to trust us. But you do, and it is the best reason of all – you have no other choice, if you wish to make it home.”

She took a step towards him. “Or perhaps you don't care about survival. I know why Tommy wants to make it home, Mr. Queen. What about you? Do you have a reason?”

Oliver met the woman's gaze evenly, and held it for a long moment. She gave a sigh of deep recognition. “Ah. I see you have.”

Oliver stepped forward into the uncertain torchlight, until he was standing with the others. They were in the heart of the mine, a tremendous cavern with an underground lake in the center. The flickering light barely lapped at the water’s edge and the walls of the cavern, but Oliver could see that they were honeycombed with tunnels. The older woman took his arm and guided him to the nearest one. Far in the distance, Oliver thought he could see golden light moving shadows against the curved wall. When the woman gently pushed him forward, he did not resist. Tommy and N'sal followed as the climbed into the tunnel. It went upwards; the large cavern from which they came was the deepest point of the mine, and all of the tunnels led upwards from it. Even though he had paid close attention and was fairly certain he could find his way back out, Oliver shivered at the thought of being left alone down here, wandering around blind turns, always imagining what might be stalking him in the dark.

Whatever monster his imagination could conjure up, it wouldn't be any more dangerous than N'sal. He could feel her watching him, and as they moved through the darkness, he felt like a prisoner of war. Still, he had made the choice to trust them; to trust Tommy. If he thought of it that way, it didn't seem so stupid, like he was walking into a trap unarmed.

They reached the end of the tunnel and emerged into another room, not as cavernous as the last but still large. It was not what Oliver had expected, and he moved to the side so that he could stand with his back against the rock wall while he took it in. It was oddly familiar, and it took a moment to realize why. It looked like the basement of Verdant. The room may have been carved out of the belly of the earth, lit by fire, and filled with a handful of busy strangers, but Oliver recognized it. It was a room designed for preparation - for training and innovation and crisis response. There were hundreds of torches set into recessed spaces in the walls, and a couple of children ran around the outskirts of the circular room, trimming candles and re-lighting torches that had gone out. In the center of the room, three kids – Oliver judged them to be about Roy's age – carefully mimicked the slow-motion movements of an old man. To one side of the training area, a series of long tables were lined up with what looked like microscopes on them. There were even a few mini-fridges like the one Felicity used for medical supplies, but they didn't seem to be connected to any power source. 

The other half of the room looked like an old library, with teetering, dusty shelves which held not only books but objects ranging from weapons to plants. There were ornate old vases, large pieces of jewelry, and unidentifiable objects that glittered in the torchlight. Both the tables and the shelves were populated with men and women in brown robes, different from the leather leggings and shifts worn by Katherine and N'sal.

“What do you think? Is it safe to venture in?” Katherine's lips were curved in a slight smile. She was laughing at him.

“Where's Kaya?” Tommy seemed impatient. “Shouldn't she take a look at his wound?”

“Kaya is busy,” N'sal snapped. “Believe it or not, she has more important things to do than cater to your needs.”

Katherine placed a hand on N'sal's arm. Oliver wasn't sure if it was intended to to soothe or to restrain. “We will have one of the apprentices dress the wound and give him medicine. Tonight, Kaya will look at him and decide what else needs to be done.” She nodded to N'sal. “Bring him to the bathing rooms and ask Daniel to see him.”

“I'm going with him,” Tommy said firmly. It was not a request. 

N'sal grabbed Oliver's arm roughly. Now that rest was in sight, he could feel the toll that the past few hours had taken on him. The room was beginning to swim before him, but he forced himself to resist and meet Katherine's eyes again.

“You could kill me, if you wanted to.” Tommy started to object, but Oliver silenced him with a look before turning back to Katherine. “I don't know why you would choose to save me. But if you do, I'll help you.” It was all he had to offer, and he needed to offer something if he was to get home. “If you heal me, I swear that I will help you in your fight.”

He was not expecting Katherine's response. She threw her head back and laughed. Her laugh was huge, filling the room and shaking her whole body. When she spoke again, it was in a voice that was more relaxed and less formal than it had been. Oliver no longer felt as though he was talking to character in a period film, and he wondered how many roles Katherine was capable of playing.

“I'm sorry,” she said, still chuckling. “It just struck me funny... you rich boys, all thinking that you can buy our help.” She shook her head, still smiling. “That is word-for-word what your friend said to me the first time we met.” Then, as quickly as it had come, the laughter had gone. Katherine patted Oliver's arm and smiled again, but it was absent-minded. “Go now. We won't kill you. As for the rest of it, let's talk about it when you're feeling better.”

Oliver stumbled after N'sal. He really was weak and exhausted, and he was feeling the effects of the wound in new ways – a light head and ringing ears made him wonder if infection was setting in. But he had also been the underdog in enough fights to have learned that the best way to use a position of weakness is to pretend to even greater weakness. He faked a stumble and, when N'sal impatiently yanked him to his feet, wrenched her arm, hard. He saw her wince and direct a look of unbridled fury at him. “Sorry,” he muttered, grimly satisfied. He knew from experience how a sore bow arm could hobble a fighter.

Tommy came up and slung an arm around his waist, drawing Oliver's arm around his own shoulders. “I've got you, buddy.” His voice was light but Oliver could see the concern in his eyes. That was when he knew he had a fever, because his own eyes stung with sudden tears.

N'sal glared at them. “Oh _god._ Can we please get to the med room before you guys start making out?”

“Don't mind N'sal. She's deeply uncomfortable with friendship. And other human emotions.” Oliver noticed the edge under the humor in Tommy's voice, and the way the glare between Tommy and N'sal lasted a moment too long.

“Here we are.” N'sal turned into a short tunnel that opened into yet another room lit by torches set into the walls. Oliver was getting used to the anachronistic feel of modern rooms being lit with flickering candlelight, and this room took him by surprise for the opposite reason - it looked like it belonged in candlelight. N'sal had said “med room,” not “bathing room,” like her mother, leading Oliver to expect some kind of field medic's room, not unlike Felicity's improvised setup. But this room looked like something out of a medieval castle. It was smaller than the other caverns that Oliver had seen, with stone benches draped with plush-looking cloth and cushions in deep reds and purples. In the center of the room was a bath – a curved depression in the floor that looked natural, unlike the chipped and polished look of the rest of the walls in the mine. The water seemed to bubble up from the stone itself, hissing with mineral steam. A hot spring, Oliver supposed. It must have had a relatively low sulfur content because the smell was mild, and there was algae lining the stone floor of the pool.

There was nothing else in the room. Oliver was vaguely surprised, given the resources that the Kawani put into their underground existence, that they didn't have better medical facilities. But he was too tired to care much. When Tommy guided him to one of the benches, he dropped onto it without protest.

“Take off your clothes, but _don't_ get into the pool. Put this on.” N'sal tossed him a flimsy robe that looked absurdly like a hospital gown. “And for the love of God, wait until I'm out of the room.” With no further ceremony, N'sal disappeared down the tunnel from which they had come.

Tommy averted his eyes while Oliver peeled off the robe that, by this time, was stiff with blood. He checked his wound and saw that his stitches had held, but the blood that was oozing out between them showed no signs of stopping. And he knew that infection was an ever-present danger. There were red streaks radiating from the wound, and he felt more and more feverish.

“I don't suppose you have any of the black powder left,” he said to Tommy. In the hut, he had recognized the powder as that used by Yao Fei, and had accepted it as one more miracle in a world of miracles. Now that he had time to think, he realized that it probably wasn't a coincidence that Merlyn and Yao Fei had access to the same extraordinary substance.

Tommy shook his head. “Sorry. My dad left me with a supply – I think that he didn't quite trust the League to take care of me. He was right, as it turned out.” Tommy looked mournful. “I used the last of it to wake you up and get you here. This is where it comes from, you know.”

Oliver stared at him. “What?”

“The powder. This is where it comes from.”

What did that mean? Did Yao Fei have some kind of connection with the Kawani? How was that possible? They were a nearly-extinct culture living half a mile underground, and Yao Fei had been a Chinese political fugitive who died on an island a thousand miles away.

Oliver decided to figure it out later. He had enough to do staying conscious. 

“You look like hell, man. Close your eyes. I'll wake you up when Daniel gets here. He's a good guy – he knows what he's doing. He'll fix you up.”

Oliver wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to trust that Tommy would take care of him, that he was safe. But that wasn't who he was anymore. He leaned his head back against the rock wall and let his eyes droop, so that he saw when the young man slipped in like a shadow.


	6. Chapter 6

Digg was the first down the stairs, then Roy, racing ahead of the others. Felicity grabbed Ray's arm and held him back in order to give them a chance to hide anything in the basement that might identify Oliver.

Ray looked down at her hand on her arm, then at her. “Is this another attempt to stealth- sedate me?”

“I just want to give you one last chance. You could teach Digg or Roy how to use the suit. They know what they're doing... they can beat DJ Vertigo and get the suit back to you and you'll never have to be involved.”

Ray looked down at her with such tenderness that she was overwhelmed with a wave of guilt. She was a terrible person. A terrible, horrible, awful, wretched, dreadful person.

“Felicity. I didn't design the suit to not be involved. And now that I know that you're planning to take this guy on, do you really think that I would just sit by and let you put yourself in danger without trying to help?”

 “Maybe the best way you can help _is_ by not getting involved.”

Roy shook his head. “I don't believe that. And neither do you. You know that I'm set on this, and I don't even think you think it's a bad idea. You just – what, feel guilty? Want to give me an out?” There was a crash from downstairs. Ray's face changed. He nodded to himself, as though a suspicion had been confirmed. “Oh. They're down there hiding something that they don't want me to see, aren't they?”

“Um... yeah. Sorry.” Felicity searched his face for signs of hurt. Instead, he flashed a grin at her, as quick as lightning. 

“Loving you is quite an invigorating challenge, Felicity Smoak. And I'm giving you fair warning – I run ultra-marathons. I am _very good_ at challenges.” He held her eyes for a long moment. Then he tore down the stairs, leaving her breathless. 

_Loving_ her? He had barely known her long enough to _like_ her. But then... how long had it taken her to love Oliver? Not long, not to feel that rush of butterflies and the glow that she had called love at the time. But to _really_ love him, the way she did now – that took time. That took seeing him wired late at night, and sleepy-eyed, early in the morning; fighting with him about everything and nothing - what to order for takeout and how to be a person worth being; being disappointed in him and furious with him and then falling in love all over again, from scratch, with his ferocious grace and dizzying tenderness; dreaming about him and hating him and wanting him more than she had ever wanted anyone; and knowing that if she never got to be with him it would still all be worth it, every moment.

Her eyes stung. She had put it out of her mind but there it was again, the knowledge that he was gone, punching her in the gut and taking away her breath. She couldn't fall apart now. They were counting on her. The whole city was counting on her, even though most of them didn't know it. She took a deep, shaky breath, which caught in her throat when she saw them – two shadowy silhouettes that slipped in the back door and, hugging the wall, made their way into the room. They were followed by two more, then three more after that, like termites spilling out of a crack in a rotting piece of wood. 

Felicity threw herself through the door, locked it after her, and clattered down the stairs. 

“They're coming they're coming they're coming they're coming!” she hissed.

The three men, who were glaring at each other over the remains of a shattered arrow case, looked up. Roy drew his bow and notched an arrow in place, aiming it past Felicity and up the stairs.

“Who's coming?” He was focused now, his animosity towards Ray forgotten.

" _Them._ The weirdos from outside the club. They got in through the back entrance.”

Digg moved to Felicity's desk and perched in front of one of her screens, waiting as she switched its view to the club's security feed.

“There are about 57 of them.” He said after a couple of seconds.

“ _About_ 57? As in, you might be off by an arm or a leg?” Ray raised an eyebrow.

“As in, I was being modest. There are precisely 57 of them. We need to get to DJ Vertigo now and figure out how he's broadcasting to them, and cut it off. Felicity, can you trace him and radio his location to us once you've got it?”

“He has to be using radiowaves somehow, right? So yeah, I can trace him. It's just going to take a little while for me to locate the frequency and triangulate his location.... but Digg, you can't go.”

“What?” Digg paused in the act of shrugging on his jacket, then memory hit. “Shit.”

Roy finished loading his quiver and slung it over his shoulder. “We don't know why you haven't been affected like those zombies upstairs, but if his music is playing anywhere between us and him, we don't know that he won't be able to control you.”

Ray raised his eyebrows. “Does someone want to explain to me what you’re talking about?”

“No time,” Digg growled, and then turned back to Roy. “You'll have to take him. I'll wait here with Felicity and... I don't know, put in some earplugs or something. I'll help fend off the goons.” He turned on Ray. “ _You_ just... follow directions. To the letter. Understand? We are calling the shots here. Felicity, you have an extra earpiece?”

“No,” she said, looking startled. “We've only ever needed four – we used to have more but I lent them to Barry and his crew and they never returned them, _probably_ because they were way better than anything they've got at STAR labs.” She scowled. “I'm pretty sure it was Cisco, but I can't rule out Caitlin...” 

“ _Felicity.”_ Digg gave her a meaningful look. “So... you're saying that we do have four.”

“Oh... yeah. I guess we do.” Slowly, Felicity moved to Oliver's gear table and opened the top right drawer, recently organized due to her efforts. She took out the small curl of metal and wire and, reluctantly, held it out to Ray. She fought the impulse to fold it in her palm, knowing that he had been the last to touch it, picturing him tossing it carelessly in the drawer with one hand and peeling off his hood with the other before dropping into his chair, exhausted from a mission, grinning in triumph or scowling in frustration.

This was ridiculous. It was an earpiece. It didn't hold any magic. They weren't betraying him by letting Ray use it. He was gone. _He was gone._

Tentatively, Ray took a step towards Felicity and the earpiece, and then looked around at the three of them. “So...four earpieces. You guys hustling to hide anything incriminating in your weird lair. And now you all are taking your wireless communications _really_ seriously.” Digg turned his back, sharply, and Roy looked down. Only Felicity held Ray's gaze, steadily. Ray reached out to take the piece but instead folded her hand in his own. “Look, I don't know what's going on, but I'm not stupid.” Ray's eyes searched her face until finally he stepped back, evidently unsatisfied by what he saw there. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not him, whoever he is.”

“Me too.” Roy's voice was rough and the look he shot Ray was hardly warm, but it no longer held the animosity that it had. “Let's get going.” He glared in Felicity's direction. “Felicity, I need that address.” He shouldered his bow and stalked out, Ray trailing behind him with one last glance at Felicity.

“Ah, _there_ it is.” Felicity and slid the drawer shut with a decisive click. She and Digg turned their attention to the security feed, each avoiding the other's eyes.

“I don't understand why the army upstairs is under his sway. There's no music.” Digg clenched his jaw in frustration.

“Maybe it's some kind of sub-aural broadcast? Too high-pitched or low-pitched to be audible?”

Digg shook his head impatiently. “But then I would be affected, remember? I'm not. Totally in my right mind.”

“Then maybe there's a lasting effect? Like with the drug?”

Digg looked unconvinced. “Maybe... but then how is he letting them know what he wants them to do? I mean, he could tell them all to come after Thea but once he sets them loose... without reinforcement, won't they just wander off? Druggies aren't known for their follow-through.”

Felicity suddenly sat up straight, as though a bolt of lightning had shot through her. “You only took Vertigo once, right?”

Digg looked annoyed. “ _Was given_ Vertigo once, yeah. I never knowingly _took_ the stuff in my life.”

Felicity waved her hand dismissively. “Right, whatever. So Roy said that Connor said that the way that the music works is by re-activating the neural pathways that the drug activated. But the way the _brain_ works isn't that simple. It links certain stimuli with certain experiences, and the more an association is repeated, the stronger the link is going to be. If the association has only occurred once – especially if it was a while ago – that neural pathway might well have atrophied.”

Digg sighed, long-sufferingly. “Felicity, seriously....?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Felicity paused for a moment, mentally translating. “Um.... it's like train tracks, OK? If they haven't been used in a while, they'll get all rusted over and busted up, and even if you send a train down them, it's not going to get very far.”

“So the music depends on the track still being intact.”

“Right. And if you've only done the drug once, a while ago, the neural pathway might not exist anymore, or it might not be intact enough to work. The people most affected by the music should be those who have used Vertigo either repeatedly or recently. But generally, the effect isn't going to be totally predictable because neurochemistry isn't totally predictable. Brains vary.”

Digg frowned. “But Roy said that Thea was affected by the music.”

“By repeated exposure to the music. Maybe one-time use does leave you vulnerable, especially as high a dose as Thea took. Then she was in the club listening every night, which could have strengthened and reinforced an atrophied neural pathway.”

“OK....” Digg frowned. “So I'm OK as long as I limit my exposure? And those people upstairs were probably the heavy users?" 

“Yes. And _that_ means....” Felicity revolved in her chair to face her computer screen again, “.... he could be broadcasting to them right now – incorporating both the drug and the suggestion into the same soundwaves. If it is sub-aural.... it could be broadcasting over the whole city, for all we know.” Her eyes widened. “Hold on.” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number.

“Hello?” Thea's voice on the other end of the phone sounded groggy, but not overly out-of-it.

“Thea!” Felicity couldn't keep the relief out of her voice. “Thank god you're OK!”

“Who is this?” Thea's voice was now sharp and wary.

“Oh, um... it's Felicity.”

“Oliver's PA?”

“No! I mean.... Not anymore... I mean, I don't work for him anymore, because... um, yes, Oliver's PA.” Felicity made a frantic face at Digg, who waved a flat hand in front of his throat in a “cut it off” gesture. 

“Oliver called me... from out of town...” Felicity winced. She should have thought of a cover story before calling. “.... From, uh, France? Spain. From … France, and then Spain. He called twice, I mean. He saw on the news about all the craziness in Starling City and wanted me to make sure that you were OK.”

“Why didn't he call me himself? He hasn't called me in weeks.” Felicity decided annoyed was better than suspicious.

“Oh, you know Oliver. He thought... he thought you'd be mad if he called. Like he was being over-protective. So he asked me to call instead.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“Well, you know Oliver! OK, well, do you need anything? Like, um, earplugs or anything? Because things have been so noisy, I mean. With all the sirens. And everything.”

“It's weird you should say that, actually....” Thea's voice had left wary far behind and was now crossing from skeptical into suspicious. “I've been wearing earplugs ever since I got home. Because of... the noise, like you say. I only realized that my phone was ringing because I had it set to vibrate.”

“OK, well, text if you need anything! I'll let Oliver know you said hi and that you're doing great OK-nice-talking-to-you-bye!” Felicity hit “end call” with relief and looked up at Digg, who was shaking his head in disgust.

“That could have gone better.” She admitted.

“Next time let me do the subterfuge, OK?”

“But she's wearing earplugs …. which means she knows how to protect herself against DJ Vertigo, even though she's not telling us what she knows about him.”

“Yeah... that's interesting.” Digg looked puzzled. “You'd think she would have gone to the police – Roy said that she was there when Vertigo explained how the whole thing worked.”

Felicity shrugged. “Maybe she was scared? Or embarrassed … using Vertigo wasn't exactly the high point of her life. The important thing is that she's laying low.”

“Our best shot at protecting her is finding Vertigo and shutting him down. Any luck finding the frequency?”

Felicity had been typing furiously as Digg had been speaking. “Not yet... wait! Yes. It's tricky because he's been using all of the radio towers in a 50 mile radius to magnify the signal, but I can trace it back to its origin, which is.... oh.” 

“What?” 

“What is it with the criminal element and abandoned historical sites? First the old subway line, now this....”

“Felicity, _where is he?_ ”

“In the old clock tower.” Felicity dropped her eyes. “Sara's clock tower.” She touched her hand to her ear, activating her earpiece. “Roy, Vertigo is broadcasting from Sara's clock tower.”

“That son of a bitch.” Roy growled. Felicity knew how he felt, even though it was illogical – Connor had simply picked a high location, having no idea they would consider it sacred ground. But they had lost so much, it felt like a slap in the face for him to take this from them too. 

“Sin hides out there still, doesn't she?”

Roy's voice crackled. Vertigo's broadcast seemed to be causing some interference. “Nah, it's been too cold lately. She's squatting at my old place.”

Ray's voice came through. “We can be there in under five min--” In the middle of the word, his voice cut out.

“Shit!” Felicity yanked out her earpiece as it emitted a high-pitched squeal. Digg took his out and began to shake it. “That is _not_ going to _help,_ ” she snapped as she grabbed it from them and turned them both off. “It's interference. There's nothing wrongwith the pieces themselves!”

Digg raised his eyebrows. “Man, you get grumpy when your equipment malfunctions.” 

Felicity muttered under her breath as she fiddled with the pieces and turned one back on. It shrieked feedback until she turned it off again. “Shit, shit, shit. We've lost them.” 

“We just have to hope for the best.” Digg sat down heavily in his chair. “Roy can handle himself. They'll be fine.” But the tightness in his voice betrayed his worry.

“So what? We just sit here and wait?”

“Well, what do you usually do when we're out there and you're back here?”

“Well, _usually,_ I have the three of you in my ear at once all demanding different bits of information and I'm trying to grow an extra hand to type with so that I can keep up. I've never had to just... _wait_ before.”

“Ah.” Suddenly, there was a metallic shriek from the top of the landing. It was the sound of the first of their three deadbolts being wrenched from the wall. The door shuddered under the force of a blow, and then the second deadbolt began to rattle. 

“Well, the good news is....” Digg stood up slowly, his eyes on the door, “I don't think we're going to just be sitting here waiting.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

The man – boy, Oliver corrected himself, he couldn't be older than 18 – was slim and short. He looked like he would have been more at home hanging out with the skater kids on the streets of the Glades than in this ancient room. He had the kind of self-consciously long hair that meant he had to shake it out of his face every time he wanted to be able to see something.

“This him?” Daniel asked Tommy.

“Shh. Yeah. Can you let him sleep for a couple of minutes, though? He hasn't really slept in.... actually, I don't know when he last slept. He was unconscious for a while, but that's pretty much been it.”

Daniel smiled. “I would. Except he's not sleeping now.”

Oh, well. Oliver opened his eyes. He could feel Tommy looking hurt at the deception, and wondered how to explain that vigilance just wasn't that easy to unlearn.

“I was resting my eyes. Daniel, I presume?”

The boy inclined his head. “Nice to meet you. Wish it was under better circumstances.” Despite his youth and his hair, he had the assurance of a man. “Let me see the damage.”

Oliver opened the robe, and Daniel inhaled sharply. 

“I guess we got here just in time,” Oliver said lightly, noting the tight set of Daniel's mouth.

“We'll see,” was all that Daniel said.

Then, he went to work. He examined the wound more closely, touching his fingertips to the blood oozing out of it and rubbing it between his fingers as if checking its consistency. He listened to Oliver's chest, to his back, to the pulse in his fingertips. He pressed between Oliver's shoulder blades, forcing him to expel his breath, and listened to the breath. Then he went to the pool, dipped a cloth into it, and rubbed it against the stone rim. When he pulled it out, it was sopping wet and green-black with algae. 

He approached Oliver and went to place the cloth on his wound. Oliver's hand shot out and caught Daniel's wrist. Daniel was surprisingly strong, but he didn't force the cloth any closer. 

“What are you doing? That's filthy.” 

“Please, trust me. You don't have very much time.” Oliver looked to Tommy, who nodded. Oliver may not have been a man anymore who could close his eyes in a dark and unfamiliar room, but now, when it really counted – when it was all that counted – did he trust Tommy?

Yes. He released Daniel's hand. Daniel shook his hair out of his eyes and applied the cloth to Oliver's wound.

Oliver gasped. He recognized the feeling immediately. Something between tingling and burning – as though thousands of his cells were exploding and regenerating, over and over again. It was the black powder. But it was... _more._ Like the powder, but stronger. It felt less like fire and more like a bolt of lightning running through his body.

“This really is where it comes from,” he muttered.

“What?” Daniel looked suspiciously from Tommy to Oliver. “What's he talking about?”

“The black powder,” said Tommy uneasily. “I used it on his wound before. He knows that it's why we came here.”

Daniel glared at Tommy. “You'll be responsible for the consequences, then. Katherine can decide whether he can be allowed to leave here with the knowledge.” Oliver decided not to say that he had known about the black powder before coming here – showing off didn't appear to earn him any favors. 

Daniel turned back to him, and his face was a careful blank. “You will stay here. We will make you comfortable. You will not stand up. You will not leave this room for one week.” Oliver started to protest, but Daniel went on. “In one week, you will be well. It will be Katherine's concern what will happen to you then. Until then, it is mine.” He laid a hand on Oliver's chest and pushed gently until Oliver was lying lengthwise on the stone bench. With all of the blankets layered on top of it, it was surprisingly warm and soft. “Kaya will be in to see you this evening. She will agree with my treatment of you.” Oliver sat up, just to prove that he could. Daniel’s mechanical self-assurance was getting on his nerves. 

Daniel paid no more attention to his rebellion than if he had been a child. “In an hour, someone will bring you broth to drink. You must drink it. You must eat and drink everything we tell you to, and nothing we do not.” He looked to Tommy. “If he follows these directions, he will live. If he does not, he will die. Do you understand?”

Tommy swallowed. “I'll make sure he follows them.”

“I'll have someone bring in more blankets, so that you can stay with him.” Without looking at Oliver, Daniel turned and left.

Oliver glared at Tommy, ready for a fight. “You'll make sure? How will you do that, exactly?'

Tommy lay back on the stone ground, not seeming to mind the discomfort, and tipped his head back to gaze at the ceiling. “I was planning on using a combination of charm and manipulation. But I'm not above begging.”

It was the right tone to take, as Tommy had known it would be. Oliver lay back on his blankets and interlaced his hands behind his head so that he, too, was staring at the ceiling. Only then did he realize that the algae in the pool must give off some sort of phosphorescence. The reflection of the pool swam and danced on the stone. “You might want to consider bribery.”

“What can I offer Oliver Queen, billionaire playboy?”

“How about a job? I'm unemployed. And broke.”

Tommy looked at him, startled. “What?”

“A lot happened after you… died. I lost the company. Mostly through my own stupidity. I was distracted.”

“Doing your thinking with something other than your head, were you?”

Oliver laughed. “Not exactly. I'll tell you about it sometime. You'll enjoy it – it involves me being made a fool of.”

There was a smile in Tommy's voice. “That _does_ sound like fun.” He paused. “So are we going to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About what N'sal said. Laurel being my one true love.”

“Oh.” It had clearly been on Tommy's mind. Oliver wasn't sure how to tell him that he hadn't given it a second thought. “Um...”

“Look, I know that she's with you. You guys _belong_ together.”

“Tommy....”

“It's OK. I want her to be happy. I want _you_ to be happy. It's just that in the early days, all I talked about was going home. And her. And I think that N'sal got the idea....”

“Tommy, listen -" 

“Oliver, it's _okay._ If we get home – _when_ we get home – I'm not going to get in the way. You fought your way off of a deserted island for her, man. I know that you can make it back from this. And then I'll step aside, Oliver. I swear.”

“We're not together anymore.”

“I know it's going to be hard at first, but – what? Wait, what?” Tommy sat up and looked at Oliver, squinting in the candlelight, trying to see his eyes.

“Laurel and I. We're not together. After you died... we both knew that it wasn't going to work. She couldn't forgive the Hood for not saving you. She couldn’t forgive Oliver Queen for not _being_ you.”

Tommy nodded, patiently. The momentary hope that had flared in his eyes faded. “But you love her. And once she realizes I'm not dead, you guys can move forward together.”

“Tommy... no. I don't love Laurel. And she doesn't love me – not like that.” Oliver had been avoiding Tommy's eyes, but now he looked at him. “It's not Laurel who....” 

“Oh.” Tommy looked down, then back up. “ _Oh.”_

“Yeah.” Oliver looked back up at the ceiling to avoid Tommy’s gaze.

Tommy read the expression on his face and sighed heavily. “OK, why won’t this one work out?”

Oliver decided to ignore Tommy’s long-suffering tone. “Well, she probably thinks I'm dead, for one thing.”

“That hasn't traditionally been a problem for you.” 

“And even before I was dead, she was already moving on with another guy.”

“Cheating, you mean?”

“ _No._ She would never... we weren't together. We only really went on one date.”

Tommy lay back and covered his hands with his face. His shoulders shook, and for a moment, Oliver thought that he was crying. Maybe the strain had finally gotten to him. He was about to reach out a comforting hand when Tommy lowered his hands and Oliver saw that his eyes were streaming with tears – but tears of laughter.

“Want to let me in on the joke?” Oliver asked coldly.

“You are. You are _so full of shit._ That is the most Oliver goddamned Queen thing I've ever heard anyone say. _Man_ , do you ever roll over easy.” Tommy whooped with another round of laughter.

“It's not that simple, Tommy.” Oliver didn't try to hide the annoyance in his voice. “I know I’ve pushed people away in the past - I know I pushed Laurel away - but this is different. I took her out to dinner and it was romantic and magical and then the restaurant got bombed, OK?”

Tommy nodded. “That would happen to you, yeah. And then you _would_ use that as an excuse for why you can’t be together. She loves you, I'm guessing?”

Oliver shrugged. “She never said so.”

Tommy nodded, again. “Thought so. So she loves you, you love her, and as soon as it looks like things are going to work out, you play dead in the hopes that she'll leave you and you can mope in peace. I guess your plan was working, if she was already going out with another guy.”

Oliver's fist clenched. He wasn't sure if the fury bubbling up was due to Tommy's smug analysis of him or the image of Ray and Felicity kissing in her office, but he sure as hell knew he wanted to hit something.

“Look, I know that you think you have this all figured out, but the truth is that I did want to be with her. I wanted it more than anything. Things were bad for a while there – really bad. After you died I kind of ...went feral. And then she found me, and she brought me home. She gave me a place to come in out of the wild. With her, it wasn't about survival, or winning, or making it through another day. She made me want to _live_ again. I was holing up in my little survival shelter, planning for armageddon, and she came along and suddenly... I wanted to come up from out of the basement.” Oliver smiled, bitterly, to himself. “She told me once that I was going to die alone down there, if I didn't do something about it.” He swallowed, his mouth dry, remembering. “I don't think she ever knew that I already _was_ dead down there before I met her.”

Tommy was silent for a long moment. “And now?”

“And now... I don't know.” Suddenly, Oliver felt like he was standing at the edge of a very deep chasm. He hadn't realized how desperately he was clinging to the hope of Felicity. If all of this was just to get home and watch her be happy with Ray – did he even want to make it? Here he was, in another hole, dying – just like she had predicted. Where was she right now? He pictured Ray gently removing her glasses before a kiss, Ray tugging her long ponytail playfully. Ray being there to hold her when she was sad or frightened or lonely. His stomach gave a lurch. “I just want to get back to her. And then we'll see.” 

“What is there to see, Oliver? If I was half as sure that I could make it with Laurel as you are about her, I'd be at her door in a heartbeat, throwing myself at her feet.... I mean, once we make it through the miles of frozen tundra. What is there to even think about?”

“I could lose her _,_ Tommy. I’m not talking about her leaving me. I mean that if I take my mind off my job - if I let myself get comfortable and happy, if I stop pushing myself for a split second - she could die. It almost happened once already.  I’ve brought her into this life, and now she’s a target, and I owe it to her to stay focused _all the time.”_ Tommy started to protest, but Oliver went on. “And what about when I die? Because I will. That’s what happens to people like me - we die young. Violently. Alone. Should I let her love me and then subject her to that? What the hell kind of a man would I be? What kind of love is that?” Oliver’s hands were shaking. He buried them in the robe. “No. She deserves someone who can promise her that he’ll be there forever.”

“We all die. That’s the deal. Every time we walk out the door, we risk never seeing the people we love again. That’s life, Oliver. It’s cute that you think that you should be excused from that for some reason.”  At Oliver’s stony look, Tommy pressed on. “Oliver, you’re forgetting, you’re not the only one here who has died. We’re both dead men. We both left the people we loved to mourn us.”

“You don’t get it.” 

“No, I get it. I think I get it better than you do. Look, you grew up watching your Dad leave your mom - for the office, for his mistresses. Then, finally, to get on that boat. And you saw my dad do the same thing to my mom, right up until the day she died - which destroyed whatever of his humanity was left. You’ve spent your whole life watching men walk away and seeing what it did to them and to the people they’ve left behind. You’re not afraid of hurting Felicity by being the Hood. You’re afraid of hurting her by being Oliver Queen. And you’re right. Oliver Queen is using the Arrow, just like our fathers used work and the Undertaking.” 

The anger drained from Oliver, leaving behind an immense weariness. He closed his eyes.

Tommy laughed wryly. “I don’t know why I’m getting all worked up about your love life. It’s not like I’m any better. As soon as things got real with Laurel, I ran. I just assumed she’d choose you over me if she found out that you were the Hood. But I’ve had some time to think here, and I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe I was just doing the same thing that you’re doing now.”

They were silent for a long moment. Oliver couldn’t think straight. Was it true? Was he just putting the Arrow between him and Felicity because he was scared of being like his father? Oliver had spent so long trying to make his father proud that he had stopped thinking about all the ways his father had failed to make _him_ proud. Even as a kid, Oliver had known that some of his dad's late nights hadn't been spent at the office. He had seen what that had done to his mom. Was it possible that he could ever hurt Felicity that way?

_No._ The answer came up from his core, like a flare shot off in the darkness. If he and Felicity could be together, he would never need to hurt her, because there was nothing he wanted to do but make her feel as happy and safe as she made him.

So what was he afraid of? He thought of that moment in the restaurant, when the bomb had gone off and he had seen her lying there in the wreckage. The moments before he had made it to her had seemed to stretch out forever. He had never had the kind of nightmare that he had heard other people describe – the helpless, slow-motion kind of nightmare, where no matter how fast you run, you can't seem to get anywhere. His nightmares involved solid enemies and physical pain. But those moments before reaching Felicity had been bad, nightmarish, worse than anything he'd ever gone through before. Worse than watching Shado drop in the forest in a pool of her own blood. Worse even than lying in the dirt, helplessly, as his mother fell before him, dead. He remembered the panic as he had struggled endlessly towards Felicity's fallen body, through a thick and impenetrable distance.

Then, when he had reached her, when he saw her chest rising and falling gently, the relief hadn't felt like relief. It had felt like terror, because with it came the knowledge that he had never, before then, understood how much there was to lose. He, who had lost nearly everything in his life, could not bear to realize that he hadn't yet even begun to suffer, compared to what losing Felicity would mean.

So he had shut it down. The best way he had of protecting her was to stay away from her. No – he had to admit to himself that that wasn't true. The best way he had of protecting _him_ was to stay away from her. Losing her now meant that he would never, ever have to lose her again. He was ashamed of how simple, how foolish it was. He had pushed her away because he couldn't bear the thought of being without her. Everything else he had told himself and her – that he was protecting her, that she deserved to be with someone who wasn't always in danger, that he couldn't focus on his job if he was focusing on her – was true in the same way that it was true that he had been CEO of Queen Consolidated – in name only. As a decoy, a distraction from what he couldn't bear for anyone else to see.

And now? If he ever got home, would he have the courage to tell her the truth when, instead of going off to die, he would have to live with it?

Or was he going to die down here, alone?

“Sorry to interrupt.” The voice was low – yet another riff on the husky warmth of Katherine's and N'sal's tones. “I think you've been expecting me.”


	8. Chapter 8

Ray had no idea who this kid was, but he was fast. He hadn't been exaggerating about the ultra-marathons – he knew that he was in good shape. _Great_ shape. But he was barely keeping up, and Roy seemed to be holding himself back.

“Come _on,_ ” he darted an impatient glance over his shoulder at Ray. “We’re almost there.” 

“Jesus, kid.” Ray wheezed. “I think you missed your calling. Should you be in the Olympics? Or maybe the CIA?” As they ran, the earth under their feet hummed with a bass beat pitched too low for their ears to hear.

Roy slowed down to give Ray time to catch his breath. Ray doubled over, gasping for breath.

Roy shrugged. “I take this seriously. I train.”

“No, _I_ train. I don't know what you do, but I'm guessing it involves alien technology. And a lot of protein shakes. Tell me again why we ditched my car?”

“When you're in a car you're limited to the streets. The fastest way to the clock tower involves...short cuts.” Roy took off again. Ray followed him down a blind alley and then halted, staring dubiously at the chain link fence at the end of it. It was as high as the building beside it.

“Yeah, they used to have a real problem with kids using this as a cut-through.” Roy grinned. “Of course, then we just had to get creative.” He took a running leap towards the brick wall of the apartment building, pushing off with his feet into a back flip that bought him the couple of extra inches he needed to reach the first floor fire escape. He grabbed the ladder and slid it down to Ray... who was no longer standing there. Startled, Roy looked around to see Ray standing next to him, his suit still smoking where the jet-pack had emerged and retracted.

“I can get creative, too.” Ray grinned, and it was the grin of an overgrown kid with a new toy.

Roy's face was impassive as he sized up the lumpy, saggy suit. “Gadgets, enhancements.... even freakishly acquired superpowers. Not of it makes up for work. Sweat.” Bracing his feet, he shouldered the steel-reinforced door to the first floor landing. It creaked in protest and then surrendered.

“I could have helped with that.” Ray held up his gloved right hand. One fingertip began to glow red with heat. “Best lock-pick in the world.”

“I'll do it my way.” Roy began to make his way up the stairs, Ray following him closely.

“Your way? Or the Arrow's way?”

Startled, Roy glared over his shoulder at Ray. “What are you talking about?”

The flights seemed endless. How tall was this building? “Like I said, I'm not stupid. How many high tech, top-secret, super-hero type lairs do you think there are around here?”

Roy thought for a moment. “Three. That I know of.”

“Fine. But - someone trained you. Someone you're all loyal to – someone who's missing.” Ray frowned. “And I can't help but notice that the Arrow has been conspicuously absent during this particular crime wave.”

Roy was silent as he rounded the landing and started up the last flight of stairs. Ray nodded at the quiver on his shoulder. “Besides, you should have picked a different weapon if you were trying to hide your affiliation.”

Roy paused at the door to the roof, one hand braced to open it, and looked back at Ray. “How do you know I'm not him? The Arrow?” His chin, underneath the red hoodie, jutted out proudly. In the golden light of the setting sun, he looked a bit like a king out of a medieval legend – and a bit like a little boy who was trying not to cry.

Ray shrugged. “Your build? Something about the way you move? I don't know, I'm sorry. I just knew that you weren't him.” He did know, but he thought that his reasons might embarrass the kid. Roy hadn't run like someone who was used to leading – when he threw disgusted looks over his shoulder at Ray, it wasn't just because of Ray's pace. It was disappointment, even outrage, that Ray was behind him and not in front of him. Roy was used to following someone, and he was missing him with every step.

Roy held Ray's gaze for a moment, then turned away. “Well, I'm not him. And yeah, I know him.” Roy looked defiant. “And he's worth of ten of us put together. Let's get this straight – we're not trying to fill his shoes. We're just holding the fort for as long as we can. Understand?”

Ray held up his hands in front of him. “No argument from me.” He thought about what Roy had said - “as long as we can.” Not “until he gets back.” So it was true, what people had been speculating – the Arrow was dead. He thought of the look in Felicity's eyes this last week – a broken, shuttered look. Better lately, true, but in moments like the one in which she'd offered him the earpiece, it was as though her universe had just shattered all over again. Had she and the Arrow been….? Better not to think about it now. Better not to think about what it would be like trying to fill those shoes. He would help her pick up the pieces of her world and find glue to put it back together and maybe, when she did, she would make a little space in it for him.

For now, there was a psychopath to stop. That was why he had built the suit, right?

Roy shoved, the door flew open, and they were on the roof. Across from them, haloed by the dropping sun, the ruins of the clock tower cast its shadow over the Glades.

They could hear the beat now. It was a distorted, ugly version of what Connor had been spinning in the club. Squinting at the tower, Ray could just make out shadows of gyrating and bouncing bodies. Mostly women. From here, it looked like this whole thing was just the ego trip of a narcissistic adolescent. A narcissistic, _sleazy_ adolescent. Suddenly, Ray felt a thrill. This kid could really do some damage – already had – and they were going to stop him. He flexed his fingers and felt the power of the suit surge through him.

Roy looked at him with his eyebrows raised. “OK, this is where you come in. Can you get us over there?”

“Oh, now you need my gadgets?”

Roy looked pensively at the distance between them and the clock tower, then down at the pavement far below. “Not really. I just thought I’d give you a chance to make yourself useful.” Before Ray could object, Roy had drawn and loosed an arrow at the clock tower. It cast a filament behind it, which Roy let run through his fingers for a few seconds. Then he leapt off the roof and was gone. The magnetic arrow snapped into place on its target, the broken iron hand of the giant clock, and Roy, slamming into the side of the building, fended it off as best he could before making his way slowly up the face. The dancers inside the tower continued their party, oblivious to his incursion.

OK. Note to self  – don't tease Roy.

Ray had included the jetpack mostly for fun. When he was twelve, he had wanted a jet pack more than anything, and when he had his chance he wasn't about to pass it up. The suit was also equipped with an anti-gravitational field generator, a dozen cables of different sizes and strengths that he could project over one hundred meters, and super-speed and super-strength settings that he could combine to take one enormously powerful step that could propel him the distance between the two roofs.

Still.... the anti-gravity field made him nervous. Research on it had been a bit rushed and it came with a “slight chance” of something that the scientists had called “a catastrophic inter-dimensional rift.” Using the cables would just seem like he was copying Roy's trick, and the super-step …. he looked doubtfully at the fall off the roof. Oof. That was quite a drop for the feature's first field trial.

Jetpack it was, then. He landed on the warped and dilapidated steeple at the same time that Roy hauled himself onto hit from the clock face.

“OK, you made your point. Can we work together now, please?”

Roy looked suspiciously at Ray. “Did you just order jet pants off some Japanese website and attach it to a unitard? I swear to God, if we get in there and all you can do is fly around with flames coming out of your butt...”

In response, Ray held out the finger that had earlier glowed red-hot. Now it again glowed – this time white-blue. He touched it to the iron rail surrounding them. With a whispering sound, frost splayed outwards from the glove tip. Roy touched the rail, hesitatingly, and then snatched his hand back as though it had been burned.

“Jesus,” he breathed. His breath clouded and hung for a moment before crystallizing into ice and falling to the ground with a gentle tinkle. “Cut it out!”

Ray took his hand away from the railing. “More than a jet pack.”

“More than a jet pack,” Roy conceded. “Just watch where you put your finger.”

“Words to live by,” Ray agreed.

Suddenly, a movement behind them made them both turn. Crouched behind them, clinging to the wrought iron and huddled in a faded old maroon hoodie, Sin looked up at them with wide eyes.

“Roy?”

He rushed to her, then gently raised her to her feet and steadied her. “Sin! What are you doing here?”

She glared at him. “What am _I_ doing here? Where have _you_ been? And your friend? The city's going crazy! I thought maybe the Canary would come...” Sin looked mournful.

“So you came here to wait for her? What were you going to do, take this guy on by himself?”

“No – I was here when he came.” Sin shrugged, defensively. “Sometimes I check on the place, just to see if.... just to see. When he first came I hid in a spot that she set up for me, under a few floorboards. Then when he went out for a little while, I came up here to keep an eye on things and wait for the cavalry.” Sin looked skeptically at Ray, taking in his baggy suit and still-smoking behind. “I guess... they've come.”

Ray stuck out his hand and shook hers, enthusiastically. “Nice to meet you. I'm R-- uh.... ready to go!”

Sin looked him up and down again, critically. “Nice save, Captain Pajamas.” Her teeth were chattering.

“It's freezing up here,” Roy scolded, peeling off his own sweatshirt and wrapping her in it. Behind him, Ray held out a finger, but without looking at him Roy snapped, “ _No._ We want to warm her up, not torch her.” He turned his attention back to Sin. “OK, what's his set-up?”

“I drew it in the dirt. Come here.” She led them to the spot near where she'd been crouching. A hexagon represented the inside of the tower. Sin had drawn what looked like an improvised club, with a DJ booth set up in front of the windows and a dance floor in front of it.

“Connor hangs out behind the booth, spinning.”

“So how is he broadcasting?”

Sin shrugged. “The music he's mixing in there is different from the music that he's broadcasting out here. It's just regular music. But every now and then he crouches down and fiddles with something under the turntables.... I think that must be where his broadcasting equipment is set up.”

Ray looked puzzled. “So you spied on him, came up here, waited for rescue, and while you were hanging out, just happened to draw a battle map in case someone came along?”

Sin looked at him, surprised. “In this city, someone _always_ comes along.” She tilted her chin up so she was looking in Roy's eyes. “I knew you'd come. Where's the Arrow?”

Roy looked uncomfortable. “He's... kind of not around right now. I'm covering.”

Sin brightened. “Maybe he and Canary are off together somewhere!”

Roy's voice was quiet. “Yeah. I think they probably are.”


	9. Chapter 9

The young woman who stepped into the room was not beautiful like N’sal, yet somehow, there was still a resemblance to both her and Katherine. It was power, Oliver realized. Each woman moved through the dim rooms like a wolf through the forest – unafraid, but with the certain knowledge that others should be afraid of them. Another of Katherine’s daughters?

“It sounded like you were saying some things that needed to be said. I figured I'd wait until you were done.” She spoke mildly, but Tommy looked down, abashed.

“Sorry, Kaya.” He turned to Oliver. “And sorry to you, too, man. You're right, I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm pissed at myself and I'm taking it out on you.”

Oliver shook his head. “I don't know. You might be right. About _some_ things.” He smiled lightly. “Don't get cocky.” He held his hand out to the woman. “I'm Oliver. I understand you're the miracle worker who's going to save my life.”

The woman, moving briskly, leaned forward and looked beneath his bandage. “Don't try to charm me, Mr. Queen. I am not a miracle worker, and I do not believe that your life is in any danger. Not anymore. There is a miracle, but it's in the algae – not in me.” She looked questioningly at Tommy. “I believe I am to understand that this isn't your first experience with our little miracle drug.”

Again, Tommy looked slightly ashamed of himself. “I'm sorry, Kaya. Again. I know you told me that it's important not to let outsiders know about the properties of the algae but... it's Oliver. I've never kept a secret from him in my life.” He thought for a moment, and then corrected himself. “I've never kept a secret from him that didn't involve a girl.”

Kaya favored Tommy with the smile that she had begrudged Oliver. “I don't mean to be harsh. It's completely understandable that you would want to explain to him what you used to save his life.” She turned to Oliver, and explained brusquely, “Mr. Queen, our people have known for thousands of years about the life-saving properties of the algae that grows in these subterranean pools. Obviously, it doesn't use photosynthesis to metabolize. But it isn’t hot enough, nor are the waters mineral-dense enough, to operate on the same principles as the organisms that live in the ocean's deep-sea thermal vents. Our little algae is something of a scientific mystery – once which I have been trying to solve for many years. Not only does it thrive without an apparent energy source, but it can heal any wound, cure any disease.”

Oliver looked at the wound beneath the bandage. In the few hours that it had had to work, the algae had already had an incredible effect. The areas that had been oozing were clotting and scabbing over, and the angry red streaks that had been forming on Oliver's chest had faded to a dull pink. Oliver realized that his pain had faded to next to nothing, too – and while he had been too busy arguing with Tommy to notice, his clarity of thought told him that his fever had broken.

“I don't understand. Why doesn't the powder work like this?” He didn't realize his slip until it was too late. “I mean... Tommy told me about the black powder he had used. I assume it's the dried algae?”

Kaya looked at him suspiciously but didn't challenge him. “Yes. We provide it to our friends. Some of them sell it, which is how the League and some other entities have managed to come by it. Government agencies use it on valuable operatives in the field. They did a great deal of research on it beginning in World War II. This algae has even saved a few U.S. Presidents. But it loses most of its potency once it has been dried, and the older it is, the less powerful it is. In order for it to work miracles, it needs to be fresh.” She paused, as if trying to decide how much to say. “This has given rise to certain misconceptions. The interest of the League in this place is based on their belief that the thermal pools are a kind of fountain of youth – yet, when they transport the water, it loses its efficacy. They only receive the benefits of the water when they soak in it here.” She smiled triumphantly. “Only we know why.” Her smile faded. “And now you. I suppose we are at your mercy, Mr. Queen.”

“Most people would see it the other way around.”

She shook her head. “Tommy has brought you to us to help you. We will help you. We do not kill the helpless. If we did, what would be the point of fighting to defend ourselves against the League? We might as well join them, since we would have lost that which differentiates us.”

She stood up. “I suppose Daniel gave you his, 'follow my directions or you'll die,' speech? You probably should follow his directions, but you're strong, and Tommy treated you with the powder early. You can probably bend the rules a _bit_ without dying.” She smiled, showing Oliver the only genuine warmth he'd received from a member of the Kawani – Daniel had treated him like a child, N'sal like a prisoner of war, and Katherine like an asset. “Don't tell him I told you that, though.” And with that, she was gone. 

Over the next couple of days, with Tommy sleeping on the pallet next to him and checking in on him frequently throughout the day, Oliver gamely tried to follow Daniel's instructions. He ate and drank what was given him, resisted the temptation – once the pain had faded – to pass the time with pushups, and only made a few halfhearted objections to Tommy's insistence on waiting on him.

Then, he got bored. On the third day, Tommy came in with a steaming bowl to find Oliver perched halfway up the stone wall, hanging by one hand, which was crammed into a crevice that should have been invisible to the naked eye.

“I get it,” Tommy sighed. “You're climbing the walls. Why do you have to be so freaking literal?”

Oliver let himself drop from what seemed to be a bone-crunching height, landing lightly on his feet. He peered into the bowl.

“Nope,” he said. 

“Daniel said -”

“That is gruel _,_ Tommy. _Gruel._ I may be broke, I may be at death's door, I may be stranded in the middle of nowhere underneath a mountain, but I am _not_ eating that. _.”_

Tommy peered into the bowl. “I think this is actually the same stuff you didn't finish yesterday. Daniel might be trying to make a point.”

“Think if we toss it in the pool, it will magically regenerate into something edible?” 

Tommy and Oliver both looked doubtfully from the bowl to the steaming water in the center of the room. Then Tommy put the cooling bowl on the floor.

“OK, come on.” He led the way out of the room and down one of the many tunnels leading off from the entrance. 

“I don't get it. You seem to really know your way around down here, but the League thinks that you've been wasting away in that cabin... haven't they noticed that you don't spend that much time in it?”

Tommy shrugged. “They don't pay much attention to me. After I proved to be unsalvageable – their word, by the way, but one I'm sure my dad would agree with – they stopped paying much attention, except for their weekly drop-offs. I just made sure I was always there, moaning and looking pathetic, when they came. I was counting on you waking up a bit earlier than you did, by the way – I knew that it was their day to come by and that I had to get you out of there before then. I wasn't planning on cutting it as close as we did.” He turned sharply down a narrow opening that even Oliver hadn't seen, it was so well disguised by the natural vacillations of the rock wall. “But yeah... I spend a lot of time down here. It's better than being left alone with nothing but my own company.”

“And you made a deal with them.”

Tommy's step faltered for a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was casual. “I made a deal with them, yes. I know where we are, roughly – in the middle of hundreds of miles of trees and tundra and wolves and God knows what – because my dad left me a few maps that I hid from the League. I don't know what he expected me to do with them, exactly – I guess he figured that if I wanted to get home, I'd have to earn it.” Tommy smiled grimly. “I do want to get home. And I am earning it. Just not the way he thought I should.”

“So you feed them information about the League in exchange for maybe, someday, getting pointed in the right direction to get out of here?”

“Not maybe, and not just someday. I told them about the layout of the fort, and what I know of the League's movements and habits. In exchange, Katherine swore that they would have me home by July 8th of this year.”

“That's oddly specific.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized that the date rang a bell, and he immediately felt guilty. “Oh. Laurel's birthday.”

Tommy shrugged self-consciously. “She asked me to name a date, to prove that she was serious, and it seemed like as good a date as any. I really thought that the two of you would be married by now, but... I thought she might be glad that I'm not dead. That it would be a good present for her.”

Oliver stopped and put one hand on his friend's shoulder. “Tommy... do you really not understand how much you meant – _mean –_ to her?”

Tommy didn't turn. “Oliver, try to understand – even when I was with her, even when we were happy together, I always knew on some level that I was just a bump in the road on her way back to you. I was so sure that you two were made for each other. All of this stuff about you being in love with someone else and her having loved me after all... well, I'll believe it when I see it, OK? Let's just get home. Let's get home and then.... we'll see.”

Oliver wanted to reassure Tommy, but he reminded himself that he had no right to promise that Laurel was still carrying a torch, or would want to pick up where they had left off. Maybe two not-as-dead-as-you-thought-they-were boyfriends were too much for one person to handle. Maybe she would just want to move on with her life, even once he and Tommy were home.

And running beneath it all were his own questions about Felicity. Was she waiting for him? Was it even fair to hope that she might? She probably thought that he was dead, and even if she didn't, he hadn't exactly given her much to hold on to. He didn't even know, if he did make it home to her, whether things would be any different than they had been before he left.

He couldn't think about it right now – he had to focus on getting home. Easier to think about Tommy and Laurel. Easier still to think about the task before them.

“So, what's the battle plan?”

 

****************************************************

 

Roy and Sin were huddled around her diagram, strategizing and debating as if Ray weren’t there. He cleared his throat. “So who else is down there?”

“Some scary looking guys at the door, and a couple more hanging out with him at the DJ booth. Other than that, just a bunch of partiers.” Sin shrugged. “I gotta say, I don't really get the point. If this was his master plan all along, he could have achieved it by just hanging out at some of house parties I used to go to." 

“Yeah, that's what worries me. This looks too easy.”

“He's a stupid kid who figured out how to control the world. So he decided to have a party. Isn't that what you would have done if you could control the world when you were a kid?” Ray glanced at Roy. “I forgot. You still are a kid.”

“OK, old man. Whatever you say. Let's just keep our eyes out, OK? You take out the guys at the entrance, I get to the DJ booth. We smash the equipment, grab Connor, get out. Let the cops clean up the rest.”

Ray went in first. Roy didn't object, but Ray didn't know if that was because he trusted him or because he didn't mind if Ray got his ass kicked. Roy rappelled down the face of the clock and waited. Ray circled around the other side of the building, using one of his cables to lower himself in through a gap in the external wall so that he was standing right beneath the trapdoor into the tower. Not the best strategic position... he would have to make his entrance fast and forceful so that he didn't leave himself open to counterattack.

Only one thing for it. Ray placed his gloves together and then drew them apart. The space between them shimmered as a force field developed and then grew until it encircled Ray completely. Ray closed his eyes, said a little prayer just in case anyone was listening, and activated his jet pack.

He blew through the floor of the tower, splintering a good chunk of it into oblivion. He had over-compensated for the additional friction of the field, and his jets propelled him nearly to the ceiling before he abruptly cut them off and came plummeting back towards the ground. Luckily, the four goons surrounding what was left of the trapdoor were too startled to do anything until he had gotten back to his feet and turned to face them.

Behind him, he heard the glass shatter as Roy came swinging through. He heard wet meat sounds and hoped that it was Roy hitting the bad guys, and not the other way around. He had his own problems to worry about.

The goons had surrounded him. If their decision making hadn't been slowed by the effect of the music, they'd probably have taken him out already. As it was, they were looking back and forth to one another, as though trying to decide when someone was going to do something about this. Their hesitance was what had bought Ray enough time to recover from his clumsy entrance. Now one of them was starting to come at him.

Options scrolled down his viewfinder. The display had been programmed with his neurological parameters so the text moved at precisely the speed that he could see and process. He dismissed the super-strength option. These men weren't the bad guys – they were completely out of it and operating on someone else's orders. One punch with super-strength could kill them or at least cause some serious brain damage. He could cast a large net over them, but that seemed a little cartoonish.

He made his selection. As the man started towards him with one giant fist upraised, Ray held his own arm out and a jet of water burst out of it at fire-hose velocity. Around them, the air popped and sizzled as hydrogen and oxygen were converted by the suit to feed the hose. The man was hit in the midsection by the stream, which doubled him over and pushed him – and some of the dancers who had stumbled over to investigate the situation – into the opposite wall with such force that they were knocked out.

Two of the remaining thugs were now thinking twice about approaching Ray, but one of them came at him and threw a punch. Ray easily ducked the slow-moving, wheeling fist and countered with a jab directed at the man's chin. While the suit scrolled helpful suggestions about anti-gravity, super-glue and auto-pilot martial arts, Ray finished the job with a roundhouse kick that sent the man staggering backwards until he fell through the hole that Ray had left in the floor. Sometimes it was fun to do things the old-fashioned way. He tried not to admit to himself that he was hoping that Roy had seen that one. 

The last two men were slow and frightened, so he used the net on them after all. What the hell – whatever worked. He left them huddled under a web of smart weave that, modeled on the boa constrictor, used their own movements against them until they had to lie very still in order to breathe.

By the time he turned around, Roy had taken out two of the men by the turntables and was grappling with the last. Connor was huddled in a corner, clutching a machine to his chest. He was watching Roy and his eyes were narrowed with pure hatred.

“Wanna help out here?” Roy called out as he flipped over a spin kick, landing on his feet just in time to duck a punch and come back up with a forceful upper-cut.

Ray started to retort something about “gadgets,” then remembered his recent resolution about not teasing Roy. It was going to be tougher than he thought.

“Sure, kid.”

“Just please... don't... turn me … to ice,” Roy said, punctuating his pauses with punches.

The water jet feature had worked before, so Ray used it again. It wasn't until too late that he realized that Roy was fighting in front of the large glass windows overlooking the city. If Roy hadn't had the reflexes he did, he never would have caught the man as he went sailing through the window.

But Roy caught his arm, yanked him back into the room, and used his temporary disorientation to land one neat punch that knocked him out.

“Sorry,” Ray muttered. He was expecting fury at his carelessness, but Roy looked more shaken than anything.

“We all... make mistakes.” He cast a haunted look towards the window that opened out over the clock, and to the sidewalk below. “Just be careful with that thing.”

Only then did he turn towards Connor. It was as though he had forgotten him. He held out one hand – he could have been offering to help Connor up.

“Are you gonna give it to me, or am I gonna take it?”

Connor clutched the machine to his chest and grinned, but his eyes still danced with fury. “Go ahead. Take it. I've already shown what I can do... now everyone knows to be afraid of me.”

Roy looked annoyed. “You were a good DJ, you know. You could have made it on your own if you hadn't....” His lip curled. “How does it work?" 

“I already told you.”

“No, you told me what it does. How does it work? How did you come up with it?”

In the moment of blankness that passed over Connor's face, Ray knew. He had known a lot of inventors in their time, and they _always_ wanted to talk about their creations. They could be stranded in a burning house and they would want to explain to the firemen how they had designed a better ladder. Ray had never, ever met one who hesitated to explain how he had first come up with the amazing, brilliant, wonderful idea that was going to revolutionize life as he knew it.

Connor hadn't invented it. Someone else had given it to him.


	10. Chapter 10

Digg had taken out the first five men down the stairs, knocking each one out as he came. They were sluggish and seemed disoriented – it was clear that Connor's strategy had relied more on numbers than on skill with fighting.

When the sixth man got in a lucky shot, though, Digg doubled over, which gave the seventh man a chance at a kidney shot. As more intruders poured down the stairs and past Digg, Felicity looked around desperately for something that she could use as a weapon.

Luckily, there were plenty of options. She ignored the arrows, since she didn't know how to use them anyway. She grabbed a knife and shoved it, sheathed, in her boot, hoping that she wouldn't have to use it. Same went for the syringe of venom that she took from a fridge and tucked up her sleeve. But the staff... it was dense wood, light enough for her to wield but heavy enough to do some damage. Hopefully non-fatal damage.

Felicity caught the first man on the chin and couldn't believe how quickly he down. For a moment, hope flared, and she fell into a rhythm – as they came at her, she struck them down. She let herself dare to hope that it would continue like this indefinitely – they, confused and stoned, staggering at her one by one as she smacked each one down with the wooden staff. 

Then the first one got up. So did the second one. The rest of them stayed down but more were coming, and even in their fogged state they seemed to have realized that their strategy wasn't working. They stopped coming at her one by one and encircled her. Only then did she realize how foolish it had been to make a stand in the middle of the training mat instead of with her back against a wall. Note for next time.

“Uh, Digg?” She called out in a thin voice, as the circle began to close on her.

“Hold on, Felicity! I'm coming!” But he wasn't. She could tell by the desperate note in his voice that he knew he wouldn't make it to her in time. He was breathless; he wouldn't be able to keep up this pace of fighting forever.

This was it. This was when Oliver would come. He had always, always come before – not every time she was in danger, but every time she couldn't get herself out of it. There had been close calls; there had been times when she had had to stall, to fight, to use her own ingenuity to give him an opening. But he would come. He always, always came.

When the first man hit her, she barely felt it. Her eyes were on the doorway. _Don't be dead. Don't be dead. Please come._ She hadn't realized before now that any part of her had held out hope – she had been so overcome by grief that it hadn’t occurred to her conscious mind that she hadn’t actually seen the body. But on some level, she must have registered the fact, because now hope washed over her in an overwhelming wave. Oliver had come back before. Sara had come back. Why not now? 

The second hit hurt, but she didn't mind. He was coming. He wouldn't let this happen. And when he got here, he would be furious at what they had done to her. She hoped he didn't kill anyone. 

Then the third hit had her down on her knees. She closed her eyes and tried not to feel the boot as it made contact with her gut and then the side of her head. He wouldn't let this happen. He would come for her. He always came. 

And then it happened. The heavy thump, thump of fists and feet hitting flesh, of bodies hitting the floor. The circle scattered. Someone grasped Felicity and raised her to her feet – cool, gentle hands wiped blood from her face so that she could see.

“I knew you'd come,” she mumbled thickly.

“How could you possibly know that?” The voice was cool - and female. Felicity opened her eyes and squinted through the red haze.

It was Thea.

********************************************************

 

Connor was still clutching the small black box to his chest. Roy raised Connor to his feet and gave him a shake. “Turn it off,” he growled. 

Connor appeared to consider his options. Then he opened a panel in the box, slid out a small chip, and threw it on the ground. 

“There,” he said. “It’s off.” Suddenly, he grinned. In the orange glow of the sun, he looked like a demonic jack-o-lantern. “So, what should I pack for the island?”

Ray assumed that he had lost it. “You think you’re going on a tropical vacation?”

But Connor ignored him and instead watched Roy’s face, which had gone stiff and impassive. “What… island?” he forced out through clenched teeth.

“The island where you’re keeping Slade Wilson. The island where you send the people you catch. I know all about it. When do we leave?” Connor looked triumphant.

Ray watched Roy’s expression as it carefully reassembled itself into nonchalance. “Even if a place like that did exist - you really think that a two-bit criminal like you would end up there?”

Connor’s face went white. “Two-bit criminal? I brought this city to its knees! Look outside - it’s chaos out there!”

Roy shrugged. “This city has recovered from worse. You’re barely a blip on its radar. Sorry, but you’re gonna get dumped at the police station like the trash you are.” 

As he manhandled Connor down the stairs, Ray could hear the protestations rising in pitch and hysteria. “No. _No!_ That wasn’t the deal - I’m going to the island! I’m _supposed to go to the island!”_ The echoes of Connor’s voice faded away down the stairs.

Ray looked around at the wreckage of the clock tower. A panel opened in the ceiling and Sin dropped down. 

“You gonna be OK?”

Most of the dancers had watched Connor’s defeat in stunned silence. They were now hastily gathering their belongings and making their way out of the room as quickly as they could, given their level of intoxication. Sin cast her eyes on the unconscious men on the floor.

“I’ll call the cops and then clear out. I’ll come back when they get these guys out of here.”

“Why come back at all?”

Sin’s eyes were downcast, as though he had asked her a deeply private question. “To clean up and make it a little more homey. I … feel safe here.” 

Ray decided to leave it at that. He waited while Sin placed the 911 call and then held the trapdoor open for her. By the time they got down to the street, Roy and Connor were long gone. Ray supposed it would have been too much to ask for a “good job,” or any kind of acknowledgement.

With an oddly deflated feeling, he started for home.

 

***************************************************

 

There was no time for conversation. Thea shoved Felicity against the nearest wall and snapped, “just stay behind me.” Then she turned to face a new wave of attackers.

“Hey guys,” her voice had regained its coolness. “I'm the one you came here for, right? So what are you messing with her for?” She cocked her head and flashed a daredevil grin. “Come and get me.”

They did. Unlike with Felicity, it didn't matter whether they came at her one at a time or in a group – fists and feet flashed as, one after another, the attackers hit the floor. When they groaned and tried to rise, they were met with another whip-quick blow that Thea seemed to toss off almost casually.

If they had been in their right mind, they never would have kept fighting. But they were following the directions coursing through their blood with the beat of their hearts, and stopping was no more possible than flying. They kept coming, blindly, staggering, urgently, and Thea kept knocking them back. There were more than 25 attackers in the basement by now, and more continued to make their way down the stairs, drawn by the sounds of fighting.

Felicity stared dully at the bloodied staff that she was still clutching. He hadn't come. She looked up at Thea, battling, and a red haze descended over her vision. He wasn't coming. Ever again.

The staff hit the first man in the face and the second in the stomach. This time, they didn't get back up. Others kept coming, and Felicity kept hitting, inexpertly but fiercely. She was aware, as if from a great distance, of Thea fighting beside her. Thea was taking out more of them, but Felicity was wielding the staff with fury and a strength that came from rage and searing, unbearable grief.

Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. They stopped fighting back, but Felicity didn't stop hitting until a pair of large, strong hands wrapped around her waist and nearly lifted her off the ground in an effort to pull her away from her victim. 

“Felicity! _Felicity!_ You can stop now! Stop!” It was Digg's voice, but with an edge of fear that didn't sound like Digg. “Felicity, you're going to kill him!”

Slowly, Felicity's vision cleared. Huddled in front of her was the man who had caught her eye in front of the club. Instead of looking blank, he was terrified and obviously in pain, wailing with confusion and terror. As Felicity leaned forward to help him, he cringed away, terrified. 

“Leave him. Leave him alone.” Now that she had returned to herself, Digg's voice was calmer. “Just let him get out of here.”

Felicity couldn’t see. Why couldn’t she see? Then she realized - her glasses must have come off in the fight. She dropped to her knees, frantically patting the ground around fallen bodies and broken equipment.

“I’ve got them!” Thea called, picking them up from where they had slid under a desk. She tossed them to Digg, who adjusted a slightly bent earpiece, raised Felicity to her feet, and gently placed them on her face.

The room swam into focus. All around her, the intruders blinking in the basement's light as if waking up from sleep. Those who could walk were making their way frantically to the stairs. Some, who had more of their wits about them than others, were helping the injured up the stairs. Digg opened the side door and helped a few more of them find their way out.

After making sure that none of them were critically hurt, Digg dragged the unconscious out to the side alley and stacked them against one another. A few of the unhurt stayed behind, darting fearful glances at Digg and promising to care for the injured, but most of the intruders scattered in terror and confusion.

In the alley, one small blonde woman was crouched over an injured man, using her scarf as a makeshift sling for his broken arm. She cast wide eyes up at Digg. Her pupils were large and she seemed dazed.

“What are we doing here?” she whispered, as though afraid of awakening his anger.

He crouched down beside her, and his tone brooked no argument. “You were sick. Sick and high. You came here looking for a party, but you'll be better soon, and I don't think you'll remember any of this. Just wait here for the paramedics, OK?” He stood, turned, and walked back into the building.

Thea and Felicity were waiting for him. 

“We called the cops. Are all of those people going to be OK?” Now that the fury had drained away, Felicity was shaking. She was spattered with blood, and most of it wasn't hers. 

Digg came to where she was sitting and crouched down before her, as he had done with the frightened woman in the alley, but this time his voice was gentle, careful. “Hey. They're fine. You just did what you had to do, OK? If you hadn't fought like that, you'd be dead. I.... couldn't help you. I'm so sorry.” He looked so mournful that Felicity placed a hand on his cheek. His jaw tightened under her touch. “I should have gotten to you.”

“Digg, you couldn't have. It's not your job to rescue me, anyway.”

“It _is_ my job to protect you. I can't lose you too. And besides...” He smiled slightly. “He'd never forgive me if I let something happen to you.”

As if to remind him that they weren't alone, Felicity turned to Thea. “If you hadn't gotten here when you did, I'd be dead.” She held Thea's gaze for a moment. “Thank you.” 

Thea raised her eyebrows, surprised. “That's all? Aren't you going to ask what I'm doing here?”

Digg shrugged. “If you want to tell us. If not...”

Felicity spoke up. “We'll never tell anyone you were here. Or... what you can do. Everyone has a right to their secrets.” 

Thea was silent for so long that Felicity thought that she was going to let it drop.

Then, “I knew that Connor would be coming for me. I don't know how I knew, I just knew. Something about... how _angry_ he was when I kicked him out of the club.” Thea shivered. “Dude has a real problem with women in authority.” She looked around the basement. “And then I got a bizarre phone call from some chick I barely know,  who is obviously no good at lying, and had a reason to check on me. So I came here to make sure my club was OK and found you guys. Down here. In this giant secret room that I don't even know about because it isn't on any plans.” She raised her eyebrows again, this time inquisitively. “So I guess now it's my turn to give you guys an out. I don't know what you're doing down here, but I know that it involves my brother.” When Digg started to object, Thea held up one hand. “ _Don't._ You don't have to tell me, but _do not_ lie to me.” She walked over to the remains of the shattered case holding the Arrow's suit and picked up the hood, carefully smoothing it out and placing it on the prep table. “I get a shady phone call from my shady brother’s shady assistant - sorry, _former_ assistant, still shady - from my club where they regularly have shady meetings. And now it turns out that this building that my brother bought contains the secret lair of our city’s favorite super-hero.” She shook her head. “God, why aren’t I surprised? I should be surprised, right?”

Digg shot Felicity a warning look, but it was unnecessary. For once she didn’t know what to say.

Thea ran a hand over the arrows lined up on a table that had gone untouched by the fighting. “I asked him about it a long time ago. Obviously it occurred to me, with him coming back at the same time that the Hood showed up. He made a joke about it. That was what was weird - he took it so lightly. He wasn’t proud that I thought he could be that brave, or angry that I thought he could be a killer - he wasn’t _anything._ He just laughed and went back to proving what a party boy he still was.” Thea tilted her head and tested the point of an arrow against her palm, drawing blood. She didn’t flinch. “All the times since then that things have been weird - you two being around all the time, his … _connection_... with Roy - I don’t even think that bugged me as much as that first time that I asked him about it. I knew he was lying, but he _swore_ that he wasn’t, and I believed I could trust him. So I just felt crazy.” Thea’s voice was so sad that Felicity wanted to go to her, but Digg gave her another warning look. _Don’t get involved,_ it said. He was afraid that if Felicity spoke up she would reveal more than she intended, and he was probably right. “That’s why it bugged me so much when little bits and pieces of the truth kept coming out - I just _knew_ that there was still more, and I couldn’t trust him anymore, and I couldn’t stand feeling crazy. So I left.” Thea turned away from the arrows and her manner became brusque and business-like as she ran a hand through her short hair, pushing it out of her face. “And then I came back. Because of him. And now _he’s_ gone. Where is he really, by the way?”

There was no time for a conference to decide how much to tell her. Digg sighed and righted a couple of chairs. Felicity sat in one, he sat in the other, and they both looked at Thea.

“It’s… a long story.” Felicity’s voice was gentle. “Sit down.” Thea looked surprised. 

“Oh. So he’s dead.”  Her eyebrows lowered in puzzlement, and it was as though she was searching within herself for something - and not finding it. “Or… you believe that he’s dead.”  She sat down in the chair facing Felicity and Digg.

“Thea, I’m so sorry.” Felicity nearly choked on the words, and Digg took over.

“He is dead, Thea. I’m sorry. We got word… a little while ago.”

Thea looked angry. “Why would you say he’s dead? You don’t know that for sure.”

“We do.” Felicity swallowed, hard. “I know that it’s hard to accept… I don’t think I fully accepted it until tonight. But it’s true.” 

“Have you seen the body?” Thea’s voice was cool and even.

“What?” Felicity meant to say it, but it wouldn’t come out, she was so surprised by the question. Digg said it instead.

“What?”

“Have you seen the body? You said you got word. I assume that means that you haven’t seen him.”

“Well, no, but…” Digg looked desperately at Felicity. They hadn’t anticipated that Thea might simply refuse to believe the truth.

“Thea, I thought the same thing.” Felicity found her voice again. “But if he were alive, he wouldn’t have stayed away for so long. He would have come home to…”

Thea’s eyes softened and she looked at Felicity with…. yes, it was pity. “I’m sure that whatever you and my brother had was … very special.” _It wasn’t,_ Felicity wanted to protest. _But it could have been. It really, really could have been._ Thea was being kind. She didn’t understand, but that wasn’t important right now. Felicity wrapped her sweater more tightly around her. It was a baggy gray cable-knit cardigan that she had taken to wearing in order to cover up the brightly colored, sleeveless tops and dresses that made up her wardrobe. She knew that it looked odd, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it off. She would have to buy some more blue and gray clothes -- opening her door to a closet full of bright, hopeful pink felt like rubbing salt in an open wound these days.

Digg was watching her carefully. She forced a smile for his benefit.

Thea was still talking. “...but there are a lot of reasons he may have stayed away. He could be hurt, or sick, or stranded. Or he could be doing it to protect us. If he thought he had enemies who would follow him, he wouldn’t come home until it was safe.” 

Felicity had to admit that it was true, but it was also beside the point. “Someone told us he was dead… someone who would have seen his body. And would have no reason to lie.”

Thea raised her eyebrows. “A friend?” At Felicity’s silence, she continued, “an enemy, then. There’s reason enough to lie. We don’t need to know why, we just know that we can’t trust them.” 

Damn. She had an answer for everything. Felicity wanted to shake Thea - not just for the other girl’s benefit but for her own. Thea was chipping away the core-deep conviction that Felicity had just gained. She couldn’t let herself hope again - she wouldn’t be able to bear it when the truth inevitably came out. 

“Listen.” There was that look again, in Thea’s eyes. As if Felicity were a delusional child who had overestimated her own importance to Oliver, believing that she was a stronger lure for him to come home than she really was. “Try to understand. When he and my father went missing, everyone told me that he was dead. On one level, I believed them. I grieved him, and I grieved my father. And on _every_ level, I knew that my father was gone. He was lost to me. But Ollie… he would come to me in dreams. I would talk to his grave and it was like he could hear me. When he came home, it was the same as just now, when I found out that he’s the Arrow. I _knew._ There’s no way I could have known, but I knew anyway.” She nodded, as if confirming it to herself. “If he were dead, I would know. The same way I knew that he was the Arrow, the same way I knew that he didn’t die on that yacht.” She met Felicity’s gaze again, and this time her eyes were blazing with conviction. There was no room for doubt in that stare, and for a moment, Felicity’s heart fluttered with hope. _No,_ she thought. _Don’t follow her down that road. It will break you._

“I know that I’m not going to convince you two, and that’s fine. But you won’t convince me either.” Thea got up to leave. “Get this place ready for when he comes back. Then I’m going to tear him a new one for lying to me, and then you guys can keep doing...whatever you do down here.” Thea grinned. “I might even have some ideas for improvement. In the meantime, I _promise_ you. If my brother is dead, you’ll hear it from me first.”


	11. Chapter 11

“What do you mean?” Tommy’s voice, quiet as it was, echoed through the tunnel.

“Well – what's the end game? What's all the data gathering for? What are the Kawani planning?”

He and Tommy had started moving again, and Oliver was distracted by the smell of roasting meat and freshly baked bread.

Tommy's voice was carefully neutral. “I don't ask those kinds of questions. I find that it's safer not to know.” 

Before he could ask what Tommy meant, the tunnel they were in opened into yet another palatial cavern. This one was less ornate than what Oliver had come to think of as the training room. It seemed to be a cafeteria, with cooking facilities set up on one half of the room and long, wooden tables and benches taking up the rest of the space. There were several enormous ovens carved into the wall, and the roaring fires in them provided light and warmth.

As a nod to Daniel's instructions, Tommy seated Oliver at an empty table and returned with two plates piled high with what looked like roasted chicken and mushrooms, small tangles of greens, and large hunks of bread. Once again, Oliver was struck with the ingenuity that it must have taken to build such a civilization underground. A part of him was caught up in the details – how did they vent the smoke from the fires? Did they have livestock? How could they possibly grow enough food and hunt enough game to support themselves, without the League discovering their existence? But a larger part of him knew from experience that people could be almost endlessly resourceful when their survival was at stake.

No sooner had he eaten a few bites of food than he looked up to find that Katherine, N'sal, and Kaya had silently seated themselves across from him.

“I see you took me at my word when I said that you could bend the rules a bit.” Kaya smiled at him.

“I feel fine. I don't need to be treated like an invalid.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No pain?”

“Very little,” he lied. An occasional shot would still sometimes lance through him and leave him breathless, when he twisted the wrong way or moved too suddenly. But just as it was sometimes necessary to pretend to greater weakness than he felt, Oliver knew that survival sometimes called for the opposite. He did not like the idea of these women thinking of him as weak. They hadn't hurt him when they had the chance, but he felt as though they wanted something from him, and that put him on his guard. Plus, the way they had descended silently and were now watching him with identical, hungry expressions, like vultures, was downright creepy.

Kaya looked him up and down with coolly appraising eyes. “Well. That's good. I will have to break it to Daniel that his wounded little sparrow has learned to fly sooner than he anticipated.”

“I suppose I owe you my life.” Oliver turned to N'sal. “And you, for recognizing the danger. How did you know that I would die within a week?”

“I didn't. But it got you to stay, didn't it?” She grinned at his expression. “Tommy wanted you here. My mother wanted you here.” The look of appraisal on her face mirrored her sister's. “And all in all, I think you probably _would_ have died out there. So this is better for everyone, isn't it?” She seemed different, somehow, than the barely contained warrior he had first met. She was more relaxed, less cagey. They were on her turf, he realized. She could afford to laugh. She had him at her mercy.

“She is joking, of course.” Katherine's tone was formal again, and carefully contained. “We were quite concerned for your safety.”

Oliver nodded. He placed his hands on either side of his plate so that they rested on top of the wooden fork and knife. There were maybe twenty other people in the room. If he needed to, he could get out quickly, but he wasn't sure that he could get Tommy out. He had to be careful – but he didn't have to be their pawn.

“Let's lay our our cards on the table.” He flashed a smile at them that was gone as quickly as it came. “I needed your help, and you gave it to me. That puts me in your debt. I'm not promising that you can name your price, but it would help me to repay you if I knew what you need.”

N'sal jutted out her chin. “We don't need anything from you.”

“So I'm free to go?”

Katherine looked genuinely startled. “Of course. You can leave any time you like. But.... I suppose that I thought we had the same goal.”

“Killing Ra's al Ghul.” Thus far, he hadn't allowed himself to think it – but he realized that if he were to return home now, with the League after him and Sara's blood debt unpaid, he would only be putting Thea in danger again. And given the way the League settled its debts, he doubted that Thea would be the only of his loved ones who would be in danger. He couldn't go home until he had seen this through.

Katherine didn't answer. Kaya spoke up. “We don't care about Ra's. That's your problem. We only care about driving away the League so that our people can be safe.

Oliver looked at Katherine. Something told him that Kaya didn't speak for her mother, or her sister. They had their own score to settle with Ra's.

Katherine nodded, as though reading his mind. “Just get me into the same room as him. That's all I ask. I will answer for both your task and ours.”

“How?” Oliver tried to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He would have been willing to at least give N'sal a fighting chance of surviving, if not winning, a bout with Ra's, but what could an old woman do?

And there was something else. Something about his fight with Ra's felt... unfinished. In the final moments, when the man had looked into his eyes before pushing him off the cliff... there was something in the expression of his eyes that Oliver hadn't been able to identify. Oliver couldn't figure it out, but he couldn't forget it, either. If he left Ra's to kill or be killed by Katherine, he would never know what it had been.

“I could say, 'leave that to me,' but you won't, will you?” Katherine sighed. “Very well. Ra's has kept himself alive for so long by bathing in the water here. He is now tied to this place. The League claims that this is ceremonial ground but the truth is that they stay here because they have no other choice – on this soil, Ra's is invincible. Off of it, he will quickly grow weak and become susceptible to attack.” She held up a hand. “And before you ask, no, we don't know why. We know that the algae, in its living form, prolongs life and heals anything, and that in its inert form it maintains some of those powers. The healing powers of the algae, and the benefits of the dried algae, can be maintained anywhere. But the life-extending powers of the live algae lasts only briefly once you have left the immediate region of the thermal pools – only as long, in fact, as the algae itself can live outside of the water.”

Kaya looked frustrated. “My mother makes it sound mystical. It is not. It operates on scientific principles.” She sighed. “I have to admit, though, that until we identify what those principles are, it looks good for the mystics.”

Katherine shook her head impatiently. Oliver liked her better when she showed regular human emotions like annoyance.

“I doesn't matter why it works. What matters is that it does. When removed from the land of the waters, Ra's will not survive. His age will catch up with him quickly. His _true_ age.”

“But you aren't able to get him away from the water.”

“No.” Katherine leaned forward and her eyes glowed. “But we might be able to get the water out of him.”

Kaya looked uncomfortable, but Katherine went on, “there is a… ritual. Kaya does not like for me to call it that, but it's true. It is magic. When the right amount of algae is administered in the right time and the right way, it has the opposite effect. It somehow …. reverses the healing effect.”

Tommy, who had been watching the exchange silently, seemed to feel that it was time for him to contribute. “'In the right way?'”

Kaya broke in. “It is not the ritual that matters. It's the dose of the algae. Just like any medication, it's possible to overdose. We just need to find a way to give him the right dose.”

Oliver was watching N'sal, who had been silent as her mother and sister argued. She gazed back steadily, and answered the question that he had not asked.

“I don't know who's right. I don't care.” Before Katherine and Kaya could speak, she went on, with quiet determination, “I just need to get in the same room as him. I can take care of the rest.”

“There you are.” Katherine spoke triumphantly. “The plan is the same, no matter who is right. On the correct day, you deliver us to Ra's – me and N'sal. Kaya will prepare the dose. I will perform the ritual, and N'sal will … do the rest.”

Tommy's lips curled in distaste, and N'sal looked down to avoid having to see the expression of disgust. Kaya gave Tommy a beseeching look. “Once they realize that we can counteract the water, they will leave us alone. We will have our land and our livelihood back.” Her voice trembled, and Tommy's face softened as he looked back at her. “Please. It's all we ask – to be left alone.”

“To be left alone to peddle your miracle drug to the highest bidder.” Oliver held up a hand to stop the women from protesting. “Sorry, I'm just a little burnt out on miracle serums and potions. But it doesn't matter. You're right – we do all need the same thing. But your plan will never work.” N'sal glared at him and he glared back. “You're depending on each other, but you're not on the same page. When push comes to shove, Katherine is going to trust magic, Kaya will trust science, and N'sal, you'll trust force. Force gets my vote, by the way, but we can't go into this with three different versions of a plan – even if it looks, from the outside, like they're all the same plan. If you're going to do this, you have to know that your team is behind you. You guys aren't behind each other, and you sure as hell aren't behind me. That's why I'm going to do it alone.”

“I _knew_ we couldn't trust you,” N'sal hissed. She sprang up, her chair clattering to the ground behind her.

Oliver jumped up to face her. “And I don't trust you. So that works out.” His hand closed around his knife.

Others in the room were starting to take notice of the commotion and get to their feet. Tommy put a hard hand on Oliver's arm and spoke through gritted teeth. “ _Sit.... down.... dumbass._ ”

Slowly, Oliver sat. So did N'sal. Katherine sighed. “Mr. Queen, you're right. We are not on the same page, and we are asking you to take a risk by joining with us. If it goes badly, it will go very, very badly. We know this because it happened. Once before, when Ra's first came and we went underground.” She looked immensely sad. “You know that I am the leader here. But you don't know what that means – what kinds of choices I have had to make. A long time ago, I was married to the greatest warrior among the Kawani. The girls were young. You may have realized that we are all older than we look, Mr. Queen – this was over 90 years ago. We decided, together, to try the ritual against Ra's. But Ra's was young then, too, and strong even without the water. He killed my husband. He let me go because.... for reasons that I may not ever understand, completely. I think perhaps because he knew I had children, or because he believed that our people were already defeated and posed no threat to him.” Her face hardened. “He was wrong.”

Oliver looked at N'sal. “Have you ever killed before? A human being?”

Her face was dark. “He is no human being.”

Oliver was silent for a long moment. “Fine. We'll do this, and if it goes wrong, we'll probably get ourselves killed.” Suddenly, he realized what it was that he had seen in Ra's face, and why he had recognized it. If he had looked into a mirror in that moment, he would have seen it in himself. “But I'll be the one to do it. I'll be the one to kill him.”

N'sal drew herself up proudly, but her mother silenced her with a look. “And what makes you think that you'll be able to do it this time?”

“Because I know something now, about him. Something that he never would have let me see if he'd known that I would survive. He _wants_ to die. He's ready. He's just waiting for the right moment to stop fighting.”

N'sal scoffed. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because....” Oliver looked at Tommy and then looked away. “Because I recognized it. When I went to the mountain to fight him, I was ready to die. I had said my goodbyes. I had said.... some things that needed to be said. I knew that I wasn't coming back. I think that's why he beat me. By the time I faced him, I had already beaten myself.”

Tommy looked down, his face flushed and dark. Oliver didn't blame him if he was angry. It must have looked like weakness, like he had given up. How could he ever explain how simple it had all seemed then? He was going to die to save the only family he had left, after the rest of his family had died because of him. There was no place for him in the world: he couldn't be with Felicity, he couldn't be honest with Thea.... his path had been so clear. Then.

“And now?” Katherine spoke the words that were in his head.

She looked at him again, the same way she had back in the tunnel, as though she was searching him down to his soul to find something. She must have found it, because she sat back and nodded, once, sharply.

“OK. But N'sal and I will be there. We can't afford to take any chances this time. Once the League finds out that we are still here, they won't rest until they've decimated us. We can't give them that chance. Our first blow will be our last, so we have to make it count.”

N'sal stood up. “Come on, I have some things to show you.” Now that they were on the same team, she was business-like and neutral. “We used what Tommy told us to draw up plans of the fort. They're as accurate as they're going to get, so we might as well work from them.”

“No.” N'sal bristled at Oliver’s interruption, but didn't argue. “If we're not positive about the plans, we're better off assuming that we're going in blind. Better than counting on a detail that turns out not to exist. Tommy, what are you certain of?”

“Not much. Sorry. I know the training rooms pretty well....I spent a lot of time getting beaten in there.”

“Then we'll start there.” Oliver stood up. “I also want to spar with you, N'sal.”

“What? What kind of a stupid waste of time is that? We don't have time for your pride...”

“It's not about pride.” Mostly. “It's about learning who you are. If I don't know your strengths and your weaknesses, I can't anticipate your move in a tight corner.” Suddenly, with an ache that rivaled the sword running through him, he missed Digg. Fiercely. “If I can't anticipate you, I can't save your ass, or count on you to save mine.”

“When did you become such a team player?” Tommy followed N'sal and Oliver towards the training room. Kaya and Katherine remained at the table, their heads bent together in conversation.

Oliver remembered what it had been like to race through the night, invulnerable, with Roy at his back, Digg looking out, and Felicity in his ear.

 “An alloy is always stronger than a single metal.”

 

**********************************************

 

By the time Roy made it back to the basement, Thea was gone. Maybe that was best, Felicity reflected. She knew that it was a long shot, but she was rooting for them to make it in the long run, and she didn't think that being face to face with him in the wreckage of another lie was in the best interest of true love.

She and Digg filled him in on the conversation with Thea. His face betrayed no emotion, and he responded only with, “It will probably take her some time to accept it.” Then he turned his back on them, an obvious request for privacy that Digg and Felicity knew to respect.

Slowly, they started trying to put the basement back together, muscling tables and shelves back into place, sorting supplies, and adding to an ever-growing list of items that would need to be replaced, in silence. Felicity looked at her shattered computer screen in dismay.

“This kind of thing was a lot easier when Oliver was a billionaire,” she sighed.

“I'll talk to Lyla. ARGUS has used us enough; I think it's time for them to come through. They have a fund for contractors that I think could be stretched to apply here.” Digg looked in disgust at the remains of Felicity's ergonomic chair and kicked a stray armrest aside. For Digg, that uncharacteristic display of temper was all but a tantrum. Felicity wasn't surprised. There was a heaviness to the air. Usually, when they won, they lingered in the basement, wired, unable to come down from the buzz of triumph. Now, they seemed to be moving in slow motion.

It was no mystery. Connor had given them something to focus on. Now that he was in police custody, they were left, each alone in their grief, in the wreckage of the basement, with Oliver’s ghost.

Suddenly, Felicity was sick to death of it – the grief, the anger, seeing her own feelings mirrored in the withdrawn, tight set of Roy and Digg's faces. For a while, they had been able to open a window into seeing themselves as a team, even without him. And it had worked – they could do it. But instead of giving them hope, it had left them feeling empty and alone. Felicity wondered if Digg and Roy felt the way she did – that every victory without Oliver was one more step away from him, one more nail in his coffin. Felicity thought longingly of the cool blue of her apartment. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweater and realized that the syringe was still in there. It was probably denatured from being unrefrigerated for so long – she would find a safe way to dispose of it tomorrow. She decided to keep the knife in her boot for the walk home. Tonight, even familiar routes didn't feel safe to her. She thought of that moment of helpless terror, praying for Oliver to save her, and realizing that he wasn’t coming. She wondered if she would ever feel safe again.

As she turned towards the stairs, the door to the club swung open. She jumped back, scattering the pile of arrowheads that she had just collected. Digg's gun and Roy's arrow swung in unison towards the invader...

Which was a pizza box. Above it, Ray's face poked cautiously around the doorjamb.

“Jesus, man.” Digg lowered his gun and breathed out, slowly.

“I figured I'd better lead with the pizza.” The smell wafted down the stairs, and suddenly Felicity realized that she was starving.

“I wasn't sure what everyone liked, so I brought pepperoni, cheese, vegetarian...” Ray's face disappeared for a moment and then reappeared. “I've got like 8 pizzas out here.” Then he took in the wreckage of the basement. “Yikes. Felicity, I'll set up an account and give you access.... use whatever you need to replace this stuff.”

Roy looked annoyed and started to speak up, but Digg interrupted him. “Thanks.” He looked pointedly at Roy. “It's probably better if we save up our favors from ARGUS.” Roy lapsed into silence but glared at Ray.

Felicity knew how he felt. Every increment that Ray encroached on the team felt like a betrayal of Oliver. She was the one who had brought Ray in, and she didn't regret it, but she couldn’t help but feel that in letting him in they were letting Oliver go.

Ray hadn't waited for an invitation. He deposited a stack of pizza boxes on one of the tables that they had already righted, and took in their faces. “Look. I know that you guys are pretty ambivalent about me being here. But I was on my way home, and I should have been feeling great – successful pilot of the new suit, bad guy behind bars, all that – and I didn't. I felt like crap. I just felt like... I should be with you guys. Celebrating.” He took in their faces. “OK. So you don't feel like celebrating. But I think – hear me out, here – that you need to celebrate anyway.”

Before they could reply, he rushed on, and Felicity realized with surprise that he was nervous. “I don't know who the Arrow was to you. I don't know who …. Oliver Queen was to you. But I do know kind of a lot about grief.” His gaze found Felicity's then turned to the others. “Felicity already knows this, and I'm trusting you guys with it, because you trusted me with your secret. My fiancee was killed when the super-soldiers invaded Starling City last year. They killed her right in front of me, and I couldn't do anything to protect her.” His voice caught and his eyes fell for a moment, but he didn't stop. “And after that, I wanted to die. I mean, that's all I wanted. I couldn't bring myself to do it myself, but I kept putting myself in these stupid situations – driving too fast, drinking too much, that kind of thing. But every morning, I kept waking up. And then – I don't really believe in an afterlife. I don't think I do, anyway. But one night, when I was really, really drunk, I just suddenly had this image – of Anna watching me from somewhere, and seeing all this stupid stuff I was doing. Seeing me throwing my life away. And she was _furious_. Not just because she wouldn't have wanted me to die, but because I was throwing away what she never got to have. She was a fighter, and I know that she would have done anything to stay alive for just five more minutes. And suddenly, doing anything _other_ than surviving just felt.... like spitting on her memory.” Ray took a deep breath. “So I started doing one thing, every day, to show that I was glad to be alive. Just one thing. Even when I didn't feel like it. Small things. Roll down the windows in my car to smell the air; go for a run on the beach at sunset. Eat pizza.” He paused. “And it didn't really help. Not at first. I still wanted to die. But then, one day, I was on a run, and I realized I was looking forward to doing it again the next day. That was how it started.” Ray sat down, opened a box, and started eating. “So I came here to eat some pizza. With you guys. But that part's up to you.”

Digg and Felicity looked at each other. They did have to eat.

Roy was the last to join them, but once he did, the pizza went pretty fast. They still didn’t leave. They lingered long into the night, talking, planning, strategizing, and -- every once in a while, quietly, cautiously, as if remembering something long forgotten -- laughing. 


	12. Chapter 12

They were in the restaurant again, but this time, the space between them was endless. Felicity's voice was urgent, desperate – in pain. _Please come. Please come._ Her voice echoed in his head and he was trying. He was trying as hard as he could, struggling around broken tables and chairs, but it was as though he was the old Oliver, the kid who had washed up on the island. The Arrow's strength was gone. He battled to climb over an upturned table and pounded, frustrated, on its surface.

He could see her now, through the thick and roiling smoke. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't breathing, but her voice was still resounding in his head, softer now, despairing. _He's never coming again._

_I am!_ He wanted to scream. _Hold on! I'm coming for you- hold on a little longer..._ but she was being surrounded by people and smoke, and when they cleared, she was gone. He began searching for her, frantically, wrestling weakly with the arms that seized him and dragged him away. He was screaming her name now. Why was he so weak? All those years on the island, all of the training, and it was worthless if he couldn't use it now when it really mattered... what good was Oliver without the Arrow, if he couldn't save her?

He screamed her name, again and again. The arms dragged him further away and he struggled, lashing out with everything that was in him.

“ _Ow._ OK fine, _don't_ wake up.” N'sal's voice was rough with sleep. “Stay in your stupid nightmare.” She shoved him back down onto his cot.

“What the hell....?” On the bedroll next to him, Tommy sat up slowly, blinking in the dim light from the dying, smoking fire. They were lined up in the sleeping quarters next to the training room, where most days they had been training until they dropped to sleep from exhaustion, barely pausing long enough to eat and have short, curt conversations with Kaya and Katherine about their own preparations.

N'sal roughly rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “This fool was screaming something. He was going to wake up the whole mine. When I tried to wake him up he punched me.” N'sal rubbed her arm where Oliver's fist had made contact. It was the same one he had wrenched when he had fallen a few days earlier. “I'm going to start demanding combat pay for hanging out with you.”

Oliver was breathing heavily and his eyes had a far away, frightened look. The glare that Tommy had started to turn on him for punching N'sal turned into a look of concern. “Hey buddy... you OK?”

“I have to go.” Oliver started to struggle to his feet, but Tommy and N'sal both held him back. “I have to _go._ I shouldn't be here. She needs me.”

“Who needs you?” N'sal snapped, but Tommy shot her a warning glance.

“It was just a dream, man. She's OK. She's fine.”

“How do you know?” Oliver glared at Tommy. “I've been stupid. I assumed that she'd be safe without me there – that they'd all be safe – but the League knows I'm alive. How do we know they haven't sent someone after the people I care about?” It was a low blow, but he had to awake in Tommy the same sense of urgency he felt. “Tommy, they know that you helped me escape. How do you know they're not sending people after Laurel?”

Tommy went pale. The glance that N'sal shot Oliver was pure poison.

“My god... I didn't think.” Tommy muttered to himself as he began to fumble with his bedclothes his robe. “How could I not think of that?”

“So you'll leave us? Just like that?” Desperately, N'sal played the only card left in her deck. “You know that we'll die without your help.”

Tommy gave N'sal an anguished look. “Wait for us! Don't do it without us. We'll just... we'll make sure they're OK, and we'll be back. I swear.”

N'sal's eyes dropped. “You won't be back,” she said so softly that Oliver could barely make it out. Tommy knelt in front of her, where she huddled on her bedroll, suddenly looking defeated and alone.

“N'sal, I _will._ I will come back to you. I swear.” Oliver knew that he should leave them alone, but his sense of urgency was too strong. They had to leave _now._

“We'll come back to help you with your plan. Nothing has changed – I still need Ra's al Ghul dead. We'll be back in time.”

N'sal pushed away Tommy's hand as it sought her face. “You will not. We will die.” She met Oliver's gaze proudly. “We will die protecting our people, like we were meant to.”

“I won't let that happen,” Tommy growled. “I _will_ be back.”

“We both will. Once we make sure they're safe. They're sitting ducks right now – we have to warn them, at least. Maybe get them someplace safe. Then we'll come back and take care of this once and for all.” Oliver's mind was racing. Maybe Felicity should go to Central City for a little while... Barry could watch out for her. Oliver didn't love that thought, but it was the best he could think of right now. The League wouldn't think to look for her there. And Digg and Roy could keep an eye on things in Starling. As for Thea... Oliver remembered how she had fought back against the Arrow. He had to admit that, until he came home, he might have to trust Thea to take care of herself.

But Felicity didn't know how to fight. Felicity counted on him, and he wasn't going to leave her unprotected. He had made her a target by caring about her. She was his weak point, and it wouldn't take the League long to figure that out and use her to draw him out of hiding. Every moment he deliberated was a moment that she was in danger.

“Will you at least take leave of my mother and sister?” The ice in N’sal’s voice was palpable. Oliver spared a moment to feel sorry for Tommy. He remembered Slade's gun wavering between Sara and Shado, remembered his own agonized helplessness. It was terrible to be in love with two people.

But that was Tommy's problem. Oliver's pounding heart told him what his own priority was. Still, on some level, he knew that he needed to stop, to think. It had been a dream, yes, but her voice had seemed so real. Was he overreacting?

No. He simply hadn't allowed himself to think before about how vulnerable she was – how vulnerable they all were – without knowing the danger. At least he could warn them. That would be better than nothing.

“You're right – we should speak with Katherine. We'll explain the situation – that we need to get to town, to get them a message. That's all, N'sal. We'll be back here within a month. Six weeks, if we run into League scouts and have to lie low.”

“You know that my mother insists on doing the ceremony on the summer solstice.”

“Then we have to wake your mother up. Now. We're leaving before sunrise.”

 

*********************************************

 

“Digg, _please._ ”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

It was the morning after the invasion, and they were still setting the room to rights, but Felicity had to admit that the full force of Ray’s money had helped. Things were getting delivered, installed, and fixed a lot faster than they would have if they’d been relying on her AmEx. She used a dust cloth to polish her new monitor until she could see her face in it, wearing a new pair of glasses to replace the bent ones. They had arrived in a small delivery box this morning, and they were exactly like her old ones, but shatter-resistant, which was a nice touch.

“Because. It’s dangerous.” 

“Not nearly as dangerous as _not_ doing it.”

“And unnecessary.” Digg’s tone was nonchalant, as though they were discussing the weather. He twisted the final screw in her new chair, flipped it upright, and dusted off his hands. Only then did he sit across from her, and his tone grew serious. “Last night was a fluke, Felicity. I know it was scary. But if I train you, you’re just going to end up getting into danger. Look at Laurel.”

“I’m not Laurel!” Felicity heard her voice rising and forced herself to take a breath. “I’m not going out there to clean up the streets or … channel my rage or right wrongs or whatever she’s doing. I swear, Digg, I just want to protect myself.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “Then take a self-defense class at the Y.”

“That’s not good enough, and you know it.”

“Sorry, Felicity. Unless, by some miracle, you prove to me that you’re safer with it than without it, I’m not doing it.”

Felicity set her jaw. “Let’s be honest, Digg. It’s not because you think it’s not safe. It’s because you think Oliver wouldn’t have wanted you to do it.”

Digg stood up and turned away, but Felicity followed him and planted herself in his path. “Well?”

“OK, fine. Oliver probably wouldn’t be crazy about me putting the woman he loves in the ring. But only because - take it from me - when you learn how to fight, suddenly you find yourself in a lot more fights. He wouldn’t want that for you. And maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t want to do Oliver like that.”  This time when he turned away, Felicity let him go. She wished she hadn’t brought up Oliver, and not only because she didn’t really want to hurt Digg. She knew that he’d be less likely to help if he knew that Oliver was her real reason for wanting to learn.

She had meant it when she said that she wasn’t like Laurel, chasing some vendetta. She didn’t have any illusions about being able to bring Oliver’s killer to justice, and she didn’t especially want to. It wouldn’t bring him back.

But she kept thinking about that moment when she saw Thea - losing Oliver all over again because she had allowed herself to hope for a brief moment. And then again, the hope that had dared to lift its head when Thea seemed so sure, like a little bird turning towards the sun in the middle of winter.

She couldn’t bear it. For herself, for Thea - even for Roy and DIgg, though they wouldn’t admit it - she had to find him and bring him home. Somewhere inside, a small voice - the old Felicity, the girl who had never met Oliver Queen, who had no idea of what she was capable -- whispered that it was a fool’s errand, and that even if she survived the journey and found the League, the chances of her finding his body and somehow getting it home with her were slim.

So be it. She had to try. He had survived a shipwreck and five years of exile and had made his way back, and she couldn’t bear to think of him now, lying in the wilderness or in a shallow grave, miles from home. With no one to know him, to remember him. To mourn him.

And if she was going to try, she was going to do her best to make it home. In order to do that, she had to learn to fight. Not to kill - not even to win, not against the members of the League and their ilk. But to survive. To deliver a painful enough blow to give herself a chance to escape. She needed to learn, not to attack, but to defend.

“Digg, I’m sorry.” She would have to find another way. “I shouldn’t have brought Oliver into it. That was a low blow.”

He smiled at her, clearly relieved that she was letting it drop. “It’s OK to talk about him. He’s still here, you know.” He looked around the newly outfitted, gleaming room. “Although I’m not sure how he’d feel about our new benefactor,” he admitted.

Felicity smiled back and tossed him his keys. “Go home, before Sara and Lyla forget what you look like.”

“I probably should. Are you going to be OK here?” He was watching her closely.

“I just want to play with my new toys. I don’t know who Ray knows, but this machine is _nice._ Like, not available on the market, possibly the result of high-level cyber-espionage, we could probably be arrested just for looking at it, nice.” She ran a hand over her new computer. Digg looked reassured. “Don’t forget to lock up,” she reminded him as he headed out the door.  

  
She waited until he had been gone for several minutes, wandered casually over to the door, and double checked the lock. Only then did she stride purposefully to a tall shelf in the back of the room that had, miraculously, escaped the fighting. She stood on tip-toe to reach the highest shelf, wrestled down a big, old, heavy bowl that had been there as long as she had known Oliver, brought the bowl over to the sink that Ray had just had installed, and began to fill it with water. In the bowl, her reflection formed, wavered, and broke into a thousand pieces as her hand hit the water with a resounding _crack_. 


	13. Chapter 13

“Every woman should be able to defend herself,” Thea had agreed over the phone. Now they were standing in the middle of Thea’s palatial living room, and Felicity realized that, by keeping to so sparsely and modernly furnished, Thea had created a space that could double as a training gym. By the time Felicity arrived, the wooden floor was bare.

“No mat?” Felicity asked, thinking of the sparring space in the basement. 

“Is there a mat on the street?” Thea looked at her appraisingly.

“Fair enough. How do we start? Do you have, like, a punching bag or something?” Or a bowl of water, Felicity thought. Her arms ached but, after three days, she had to admit she was significantly stronger.

“Do you plan on being attacked by many bags?”

“Ah. I’m sensing a theme.”

Instead of smiling back at her, Thea looked thoughtful, and something else - scared? Felicity’s stomach turned. Something was wrong.

Thea's voice was soft. “I'm sorry. But you did ask. And I only know one way to train.”

Everything went red as Thea's fist hit the soft skin of Felicity's cheek. Felicity staggered back a few feet and then doubled over as Thea's foot hit her midsection.

“Always keep your abs engaged.” Thea's voice was quiet, reasonable. “It helps with balance and keeps your midsection from being an easy target.” She hit Felicity's stomach again, and Felicity went down. She wanted to tell Thea to stop, but she couldn't find the breath. So she closed her eyes, hoping that Thea would understand.

“Get up.” Thea's voice didn't sound reasonable now. It was angry. “ You think we're finished? _Get up.”_

Felicity got to her knees, and Thea kicked again, sending her sprawling. _“Weak,”_ She growled. “You have to do better than that!" 

Felicity lay on the ground, panting. Her ribs burned with pain. Her vision swam with tears. She looked at Thea, who stood over her, readying herself for another blow. She didn't know what to do to make it stop.

“I'm sorry,” Felicity croaked.

Thea paused.

“What?" 

“I'm....sorry. I.... shouldn't... have asked you... to do this.” Felicity pushed herself up until she was sitting against the wall. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to protect herself in case Thea came at her again, her lungs burning. “I didn't know ….. that it would do this to you.”

Thea looked as though Felicity had knocked the wind out of her as effectively as with a punch.

“Keep your abs engaged.” Felicity wheezed. “I hear it helps.”

Thea sat down, heavily, next to Felicity. Her animal grace was gone. She took off her shirt and pressed it to Felicity's gushing nose.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God. What did I do? Oh God, Felicity. I didn't... I didn't mean... it's how he trained me. I thought – I thought it was the only way.” Now there were tears in her eyes. 

Felicity's breath finally became even again. “I don't know who he is, but he sounds like a real son of a bitch.”

Thea looked startled. “He... was, I guess. I told him that I wanted him to help me. I said I didn't want to be weak anymore. And when I saw you lying there, it was like I was seeing me. So weak, so helpless. And I thought.... I thought.....” now Thea's chest began to heave, with the tears that she hadn't let herself cry then. “I thought, all I wanted to do was to help you. How could he have kept hitting? His own daughter? How could he have done that?”

Her ribs screaming in agony, Felicity crawled over to the other girl, knelt next to her, and put her arms around her while Thea, shaking, wept against her shoulder.

“I needed him so badly. And he should have known.... he should have known that ….” 

“That what you needed was his love. Not to be ... _beaten_ into something new.” Felicity pulled back for a moment to look Thea in the eyes. “That you were OK the way you were.” She wasn't entirely sure what they were talking about, but it was clear that at some point Thea had gone to Merlyn to ask for help, and and Merlyn had responded by trying to harden her, the way he had been hardened. Felicity could feel herself shaking with anger at Merlyn – and something else. Gratitude. She was grateful that Thea hadn't let him beat her good heart out of her. Thea was stronger than Merlyn could possibly know, and it was safe from him, because it was a kind of strength that he would never even know to look for.

Someday she would try to tell Thea that, but it was too complicated, and the younger girl was too shaken, to do it now.

Thea's tears were hot against her neck. Felicity felt as though she was holding a very young child. “It's OK,” she whispered. “You're OK.”

Thea's breathing slowed and she lifted her head. She placed her hand on Felicity's swollen cheek. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered. “I can't train you. I want to help you, but I can't... not like this.”

“It's OK,” Felicity smiled grimly, and felt drying blood crack on her face. “I'm going to do something really manipulative and awful, and I'm going to get what I need.”

 

*************************************

 

Roy punched his own hand as though he wished it were someone's face. “I don't see why we don't just go after the guy that attacked you.”

“Because,” Felicity said patiently, “I don't think he was the kind of guy that we go after. I think he was just some pathetic addict. And besides, even if we get him off the streets, there will always be someone else.” 

Digg had been silent as he retrieved bandages and ice and gently cleaned her face. Now, as he held an ice pack up to her swollen cheek, he spoke. “So you think that the best way to keep from getting mugged in the future is for us to train you.”

Felicity forced herself to meet his gaze. She didn't like lying to him. To either of them, but especially to Digg – they'd been a team for too long.

“No, I think that the best way for me to _fight back_ against muggers in the future is for you to train me. Look, this time I was lucky. He lost interest once he had my purse. But next time...” As rage and then worry darkened Roy's face in turn, Felicity felt like the single worst person in the world. She was going straight to hell for this.

Then she met Digg's narrowed eyes. _I don't know how you pulled this off,_ he seemed to be saying, _but I'm going to figure it out._ It made her feel a little better to know that she wasn't fooling everyone. She turned to Roy.

 “So?” She asked, “Will you help me?”

Roy jumped off the desk that he'd been sitting on. “When do we start?”

Digg held up his hand. “Wait a second. I'm still not sure....”

Felicity turned on him. “Digg, you act like as soon as I learn how to throw a punch I'm going to go out there and start taking on criminals. How stupid do you think I am?” As Digg opened his mouth to speak, Felicity went on, “ _don't_ answer that. Look, not only would it be stupid for me to go out there and fight with you, it would probably get you guys killed too. You _need_ me at my computer. You'd be like... baby kittens out there without me.”

Roy spoke up. “I don't know if _that's_ totally....”

“Adorable, little, furry, baby kittens. I'm not planning on leaving you guys to the mercy of your own poor judgment. I'm going to be in your ear all the way. But sometimes my computer isn't the safest place to be – like with DJ Vertigo. People have found us here before, guys, and it will happen again. And before now, Oliver always swooped in at the last second but... look, you guys are the best. But you're not the Arrow. With him gone, I need to be able to defend myself to stay safe.”

Roy looked at Digg, beseechingly. Digg sighed. He clearly still believed that there were things that Felicity wasn't telling them – which, she had to admit to herself, there were – but he couldn't hold out against the two of them combined. He smiled wanly at Felicity. 

“OK,” he said. “When do we start?”

Felicity's bruises were starting to yellow by the time they did start – Digg insisted that it only made sense to wait for her to heal, since “there was no rush.” He had looked pointedly at Felicity as he had said it, and so she had forced herself to act as though there was all the time in the world, since if he knew what her true intentions were, he would never agree to help. 

Digg set an unbelievably early hour for her first day of training. Felicity was pretty sure that he did it on purpose, either to deter her, or just to be a jerk since he hadn't gotten his way. She and Roy both showed up punctually, though, Roy looking like an overgrown child in pajama bottoms. 

“I slept here last night,” he mumbled, stifling a yawn. “Just to be safe.” He glared at Digg, who looked fresh and well-rested.

For the first morning, Digg had Felicity practice combinations against the bag and the training post. He held her back from picking up the pace, and she was sure that he was doing it on purpose in order to frustrate her, so she didn't let her restlessness show. 

Digg raised his eyebrows when she didn't grow tired, but didn't say anything. He also refrained from comment when she was able to draw back the bow he'd given her without apparent effort. 

The first time she and Roy stepped onto the mat to spar, though, Felicity could feel herself shaking. Her pulse picked up and her breath quickened as she remembered Thea's beating and braced herself for the first blow.

Seeing the color change in her face and her eyes widen in fear, Roy dropped his fighting stance and took a step towards her. She flinched.

“Hey,” he said gently. “It's me. I'm not gonna hurt you, Felicity. OK?”

Felicity nodded and relaxed slightly.

“If I ever get my hands on that mugger....” Roy's voice trailed off but his thought clearly did not, and Felicity once again felt guilty for the lie. How would he feel knowing that it had been Thea who had hurt her? If Felicity could help it, he would never find out.

Thea had meant it when she said that she wanted to help Felicity. When Felicity was too easily winded on the mat, she called Thea, who said, “I go for a run every night. I … haven't been sleeping very well. Dreams.”

Thea liked to run through the Glades after dark. They didn't talk, and they didn't put on headphones and listen to music – Thea said that it was important to pay attention to your environment. For the first few weeks, she paced herself so that Felicity could keep up – thought Felicity didn't realize she was doing this until she stopped. Felicity was barely managing to stay with her when, as they turned a corner into one of the rougher neighborhoods, Thea looked back at her and said, coolly, “I think that's enough of a warm-up.”

Then she took off as though pursued, her face drawn in concentration. For a moment, Felicity caught flashes of tanned brown skin and black cloth of Thea's hooded sweatshirt against the gray of the twilight, and then Thea was gone.

As long as she had been running with Thea, no one had hassled them. Felicity had tactfully refrained from asking about it, but she had the impression that the slight hooded figure had become a familiar figure to the regulars of these streets, and that they had learned better than to get in her way. Felicity wasn't sure whether Thea's protection would apply without Thea, so she picked up her own pace, straining to catch a glimpse of the girl in ahead of her in the rapidly fading light.

When she saw the crowd of men ahead of her, she was glad that her own sweatshirt was a dark navy blue. They were jostling against each other, surrounding something in the center of their group, and their voices were low and rough, occasionally rising to a shout of ugly laughter. Maybe she could slip by them without....

She was almost past them when she saw. In the middle of the group, crouched and clutching, of all things, a bedraggled cat, was Sin. The cat had blood on its face and one of its legs was bent at an odd angle. It was wailing. Felicity noticed that several of the men were holding rocks and empty bottles.

Sin wrapped the cat in the front of her sweatshirt and zipped it up as the cat struggled. Felicity knew that the razor sharp claws must be digging into the girl, and she couldn't help but admire her grit as Sin faced down both the pain and the group of men that were taunting her.

“Let us go,” she growled, and Felicity began to hope that they would respond to the angry conviction in the girl's voice. She stood still, trying to the melt into the shadows behind the group. She couldn't walk away but she wasn't sure what she would be able to do if the situation escalated. There were six guys, and while a few of them seemed to be falling-down drunk, they were big enough, and mean enough, that they could still do some serious damage.

For a moment, they seemed to hesitate. Then one of them grinned. “Sure, honey. We'll let you go in a couple of minutes.” He took a step towards Sin. “See, I figure... we had a pussy we were playing with, right? And you took our pussy. So now...” The men behind him began to snicker and move in, closing the circle so that Felicity could no longer see Sin or the look of fear on her face. “I figure, you owe us a pussy to play with.”

Shit shit _shit._ Felicity thought about Digg's warning that, once you know how to fight, you find yourself getting into fights. If she hadn't been training, would she get involved now? Or would she run for help? Even if she could find Thea, she knew, the men would have attacked by the time they got back. They might be able to get Sin out alive, but....

No. The old Felicity wouldn't have run away, either. The only difference was that the new Felicity might be able to take a few of them out instead of becoming a victim herself.

Could she, after all, take them all down? She hadn't been able to believe how quickly her skill had grown over a matter of weeks, due to the intensity of her training. She had approached it with the ferocity and focus that she had brought to learning Linux when she was 14 – as an obstacle she needed to overcome in order to do the work that she wanted to do – and as a result, even Roy and Digg had been startled by her progress. She knew she could take out one, even two, of these men, but she wasn't delusional. She wasn't Sara or Thea, and she wasn't trying to be. She wouldn't win this fight. But that was OK, she realized. She didn't need to win, only to escape.

Out-run them, then. Shouldn't be too hard, as long as she got to Sin before they injured her. Felicity had the advantage of surprise, which would allow her to fight dirty. Piled against the wall next to her was a heap of trash and discarded building supplies from the last effort to revitalize this section of the Glades, abandoned after the earthquake. Quietly, carefully, Felicity selected a beam of wood that was light enough for her to handle but long enough to do some damage, and which had some nasty-looking iron nails sticking out of it. She hoped that they carried tetanus. 

Selecting a pair of men that looked especially unsteady on their feet, Felicity swung, first at the backs of their knees and then, when they went down, at the backs of their heads. That left four, and as Felicity turned towards them, time seemed to slow down. The ringleader turned, his mouth an outraged O of surprise and his ham fist appearing to float upwards as he prepared to strike. Felicity didn't give him a chance. She jabbed the sharp end of the beam into his stomach, and as he went staggering back, slammed it into the crotch of the guy closest to Sin. He went over and it gave her the opening she needed. She darted forward before the remaining two could marshal their wits to come after her, grabbed Sin's arm, and yanked. “ _Run,”_ she hissed.

But Sin was already moving. Felicity had been training for weeks, but Sin had the training of a decade of survival in the Glades, and she had no trouble keeping up, even clutching the frightened cat to her chest.

They rounded a corner and came barreling into Thea, who was running in the opposite direction.

“Hey, when you didn't catch up I got worried....” Thea's eyes took in Sin and the cat. “What the _hell?_ ” 

“There were these guys,” Sin gasped, “throwing stones at a cat....”

Thea looked at Sin's pale, angry face and drew conclusions, filling in the blanks. “Where are they?” she growled. “I'll rip off their balls.”

“Don't bother.” Despite her remaining fear and the ten tiny razorpoints digging into her chest, Sin grinned. “IT Girl beat you to it.” She nodded at Felicity. “Thanks.”

Behind them, they heard pounding footsteps and shouts.

“Can we just go?” Felicity asked, looking at the expression on Thea's face. “I don't really want anyone to end up dead tonight. Not even gross, evil, animal-abusing, wannabe rapists.” She grabbed Thea's arm. “Come on, let's get Sin home before the cat completely shreds her sweatshirt. And her flesh.”

“It _is_ my favorite sweatshirt,” Sin agreed. “Come on, Thea.” She took off, and Felicity and Thea followed.

Only when they were safely locked inside Thea's apartment did she turn to Felicity. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I thought you were right behind me.” 

“I must have taken a wrong turn,” said Felicity. _Also, you were breaking land speed records._ “Don't worry about it. It's just as well – we might not have found Sin otherwise.” And it really was OK, she realized. She had dealt with the situation, not in Thea's way, but in her own way – which didn't involve anyone's balls getting ripped off.

When Sin started to put the cat on the sofa, Thea shrieked. “No! In the bathroom. That couch is Italian leather, and that thing smells like it's been dead for a week.”

Despite its bedraggled appearance, the cat was less injured than it had first appeared. What Felicity had initially seen as a broken leg had appeared to be twisted because it didn't exist. At some point in its adventures, the cat had lost its right front leg, but the wound was old and healed over.

Once it had been released in the bathroom, the cat graciously allowed Sin to put antibiotic ointment on its wounds before growing impatient, prowling the room, and curling up on the bathmat to go to sleep. Thea watched as it deposited fur and dander on her pristine tile floor. 

“Don't get any ideas, Sin. That thing is not going to warm the cockles of my heart. This doesn't end with it living here.”

Sin looked up from her spot resting against the bathroom sink and grinned. Felicity thought about what it must take for someone like Sin to see the world with such hope, and sat down beside the girl. “We'll find someplace for her.”

“I know we will.” Sin looked sideways at Thea.

“So?” Thea sat down on the edge of the bathtub, bracing her forearms on her knees. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing in such a stupid neighborhood at such a stupid hour?”

Sin shrugged defensively. “I wasn't the only one there at a stupid hour,” she said, looking pointedly at Felicity.

“That's different. Felicity knows how to handle herself.”

Felicity tried to hide a glow of pride. She didn't know why it was important to her to have Thea think well of her, but she had found herself working hard to impress the other girl on her runs. She was glad that Thea had over-estimated her competence, even if it had resulted in her being stranded alone in the Glades at night. And, she reminded herself, she _had_ handled herself. Maybe Thea wasn't the one miscalculating her competence. 

Under Thea's stare, Sin drew her knees up to her chin and buried her face in them for a moment. When she looked up, her face was flushed and defiant. “It's where I first met her.” 

Thea said, “Oh.” Felicity said, “Who?”

“Sara,” Thea said gently.

The color drained out of Sin's face. “You knew?” She cast a guarded look at Felicity. “That Sara is...”

“The Canary. Felicity knows, too.” 

“But how could you possibly know? Who else knows?” 

Thea didn't break Sin's gaze, and Felicity knew that she was waiting for the question that neither of them wanted to answer. “Is that what you were doing out there tonight? Trying to draw her out, get her to come rescue you again?”

Sin's eyes filled with tears, and one trailed slowly down the curve of her cheek. Felicity resisted the temptation to brush it away. Sin looked so young, sitting on the floor looking up at Thea with wide eyes full of hope and fear. “When the men began to scatter and I saw the blond hair, for a second I thought... and then I saw IT Girl, and I knew that she wasn't coming. I knew I'd better run.” Then she asked it. “Thea... do you know where she is?”

Without saying anything, Felicity stood up. Sin barely knew her, and it wouldn’t be a comfort to have a stranger present for this. If she was honest with herself, Felicity had to  admit that she didn’t want to be there, anyway - her own grief was so fresh that she couldn't bear to witness Sin’s. The naked hope on Sin's face was too familiar, and Felicity quietly left the room and closed the door behind her before it could crack and fall away, leaving desperation and despair. She stayed with her hand on the doorknob, knowing that there was nothing that she could do to help, but unwilling to leave the two younger girls alone. She heard the murmur of Thea's voice, then the quiet denials from Sin that grew in volume and urgency until they dissolved into sobs. She heard the thump of Thea falling to her knees on the floor and the muffled sounds of Sin's wailing, buried in Thea's shoulder.

  
Felicity quickly swiped at her own damp cheeks, took a long, shaking breath, and went to find the kitchen. She would make some tea. She didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow, but none of them were going to be alone tonight.


	14. Chapter 14

“You can't leave tonight.” Katherine's voice was firm.

“I wasn't asking.” Tommy was pacing the small room where they had gathered with Katherine, Kaya, and N'sal to discuss their plan. Oliver was still. He knew better than to waste energy, but he understood the feelings that kept Tommy on the move.

“I understand how you feel. But if you leave tonight, you will be killed.” She spoke slowly, as though explaining to a child. “The League knows that Tommy helped you escape. They are searching for you. If you insist on leaving....” At Oliver's tight nod, she continued. “Then we need time to prepare a distraction for them. And we need a plan. We can help you.”

“Why would you do that?” Tommy paused long enough to dart a suspicious glance at her. “If you don't want us to leave in the first place...”

“We can't stop you from leaving.” Kaya spoke up and raised a hand to quiet her sister, who clearly thought otherwise. “But we can help you to come back. We will proceed with our plan without you, but it has a better chance of succeeding with you. So we'll help you do what you need to do. Whether or not we agree with you.”

“I don't understand,” N'sal broke out impatiently. “What has changed? You had a bad dream? It was just a dream!”

A frustrated, impatient noise escaped from Tommy. Oliver quieted him with a look. Katherine was right; as much as every muscle in his body was screaming at him to run to Felicity, to scoop her up and hide her away where he could be sure she was safe, it would be foolish to act on that instinct. They needed a plan, and they needed the Kawani as allies, not enemies.

“You're right, N'sal. It was just a dream.” He ignored the voice inside insisting that Felicity's voice had somehow reached him, that it was really her. It had sounded like her… or the way she would sound if she were hopeless and alone. _Please let it have just been a dream._ “But it made me realize how stupid I've been. I thought that, as long as I was here, my friends and family in Starling City were safe. But the League has never been slow to use innocents as leverage in their battles. They know that I'm alive. They may have figured out that I didn't kill Sara. And they know exactly who matters most to me.” He looked at Tommy. “And to you.”

Tommy looked anguished. “We have to _go._ We don't have time to talk!”

“Tommy, Katherine's right. If we run out there without a plan, we're just going to come across the League, looking for us. Besides,” he moved to where Tommy had come to rest and laid his hand on his friend's arm, “I was panicking before. Think about it – why would the League go after them now? They'll wait until there's no hope of finding us before targeting them.” _Or they will have gone after them as soon as we went missing._ “And even if they do, they'll need them alive to use as leverage. I don't think they're in any danger right now.” Oliver needed Tommy to believe him, not because he himself did, but because their best bet of getting a warning to Starling City would to be to prepare before acting.

N'sal threw her hands up. “Then why go at all?”

“Because they _will be_ in danger, N'sal. And because, even if the League plans on taking them alive, it's better if the League never gets to them at all. They can protect themselves. They just need to know that danger is coming." 

N'sal turned her back on him. Oliver wondered if she was angry because they were leaving or because she believed that Tommy was choosing Laurel over her. 

Kaya shook her head. “I don't understand. You say that you'll be back in time for the ritual, but without passports or money, it will take you a long time to get back to Starling City. Even with your… special skills.”

“But we don't need to get back to Starling City.”

Tommy looked up, surprised. “I thought....”

“No. I get it, Tommy.” Oliver met his friend's gaze. “I want to go home too – to see them with my own eyes.” He wouldn't let himself say “her.” Now that the heat of the dream had passed, he didn't want to reveal to the Kawani that there was one person in particular that he was worried about. He didn't know if they, any more than the League, were above using people for leverage. Besides, somehow it was easier to think in terms of “them.” When he thought about “her,” the urge to run became almost irresistible. “But what good will that do? We're thousands of miles away. We don't know how or when we can get to them, and all we really need is to warn them. What could we do if we were there that they can't do for themselves?” 

Tommy looked at Oliver beseechingly, and Oliver knew what he was thinking. _Save her. Protect her. Kill anyone who tries to hurt her._ “Please trust me, Tommy. You know that I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't believe it was necessary.” 

Tommy was silent, but he didn't object. Oliver turned back to the women. “We make our way to the nearest town.”

N'sal snorted. “The 'nearest town' is -”

“Hundreds of miles away, I know. And we'll have to go on foot. Anything else could attract the attention of the League. On foot, and by night. We'll need your help with supplies and preparation.” Time for a gamble to show good faith. “You name the day. Whenever you think we have the best chance of making it out. We get to the town, send a message, and head back. We don't wait for a response -” Oliver ignored Tommy's exasperated movement -- “we'll just have to trust that they'll know what to do. Then we get back here and everything goes on as planned.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Katherine nodded. “Fine. Give us three days to get everything ready and distract the League. Then you're on your own. I hope you make it back to us.” She rose gracefully and looked at Oliver regally. “Mr. Queen, walk with me.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and left the room.

Not seeing another option, Oliver followed her. For a long time, she didn't speak. They descended through the tunnel for what felt like a long time, and for the first time since he'd had the dream, Oliver's heart rate began to slow. Felicity could be dead already, or these three days could be the difference between her life and death. The message could arrive a day late, or not at all. But he was no longer indecisive; there was a plan, and he had chosen to follow it. Waiting was hard, but Oliver could wait. He had waited for five long years, biding his time until he could make it home. Nearly 2,000 nights had passed while he shivered in caves or cages, huddled in unfamiliar and unwelcoming cots and beds, tucked himself into crevices and closets and anywhere with his back against a wall, and waited for the danger to pass.

The danger never passed. He knew that now. But it receded like the tide, and when it did, when he emerged into the light, in the places where the danger had been there were treasures to be found. Felicity had taught him that. He could wait out the tide now.

He didn't realize how deep in thought he was until Katherine broke the silence. “You are thinking about your lover.”

“No,” said Oliver honestly.

“You don't want us to know about her. Smart. You don't trust us – why should you? You know what we want and that we will do anything to get it.” As if her mind was wandering, Katherine said, “I had a lover, once.” She corrected herself. “Well, more than one, really. But only one that really counted.”

Oliver, embarrassed by the old-fashioned word and the intimacy of the confession, remained silent. Katherine glanced back at him and laughed at his discomfort.

“You children think that your parents never heard of sex. Even back then – and it was a long time ago, longer than you may believe if I told you – people fell in love, you know. In _and_ out. But I never fell out.” Her voice was dreamy, and Oliver wondered if she remembered that he was there. “I married him.”

Her husband - the one who had been killed by R'as al Ghul. Was that what this walk was about? They emerged into an open room and, with a start, Oliver realized that they had descended all the way to the heart of the mine. The underground lake lapped at the shore as Katherine led Oliver along it and to a rowboat that he hadn't noticed the last time he had been here. She climbed in and looked expectantly at him, so he pushed the boat into the water, climbed in, and began to row in the direction that Katherine pointed.

“Stop,” she commanded after a few minutes. Oliver put down the oars and looked at her. There was an odd glow coming off of the water, and Oliver wondered if it was the phosphorescence from the algae. In this light, the signs of her age faded, and he could have mistaken her for N'sal.

“I was beautiful, yes.” She sighed. “But that was not why he sought me. Did you ever wonder why my name is Katherine, and not one of the traditional names of the Kawani?” It seemed an abrupt subject shift. Oliver shook his head. “It is because, when I was an infant, I was kidnapped from my mother's arms. Well, we call it kidnapped. The missionaries called it 'saved'.” In the light, her eyes glinted with hatred. “They took me and raised me until I was sixteen. They planned to marry me to their son, a nasty, weak little brat who saw me as his property from the moment they brought me into their house.”

The only sound to break the silence for a long minute was the water lapping at the boat.

“As you know, Mr. Queen, the Kawani are ruled by queens. And because of the algae that grows in our waters, our queens rule for a very, very long time. But once every couple of hundred years, the need arises for a new queen. She is chosen by the moon.” Oliver was not aware of making a skeptical face, but he must have, because Katherine looked annoyed. “Truly. When a queen is needed, all of the marriageable men gather and battle until only one of them is standing. Then, he comes here, and rows into the middle of the lake. Alone. Look up, Mr. Queen.” Oliver did, and swallowed a gasp. Above him, the night sky shone with millions of dancing stars, surrounding a whisper of a crescent moon. 

“How....?” When they had been here before, the cave had been barely lit by the torches. How could the ceiling of the cavern open into the night sky now? And how were the stars moving? 

“It is an optical illusion. Or at least – you would call it one. I call it the truth, but I suppose that's semantics. Look again.” 

He did, and more closely this time. The stars... weren't stars. It was phosphorescence after all, reflected from the lake to the ceiling. The movement was that of the water, causing the ceiling reflection to dance. 

“And the moon?” 

“That is real. There is an opening in the ceiling here. Over thousands of years, it has grown larger and larger, so that if you know where to look for it, you can find it from the outside. In the old days children used to jump from up there into the lake during hot summers. But even when it was just a pinprick, it let the light of a full moon into the cave. And when the queen's husband-to-be rows out in the middle of the lake and the moon is full, the dancing stars show him who his queen will be.” 

“How?” 

“No one knows that but the groom. Some have said that the stars form a face. My husband said that they showed him a map.” Katherine smiled wryly. “It's hardly a perfect system, I admit. Historically, the groom has sometimes been known to say that the moon told him to marry the most beautiful girl, or the girl that he has already chosen. Those are bad queens. On the plus side,” she shrugged dismissively, “they are also the ones who tend to die young.”

“But it showed your husband the way to you.”

“Yes. He came for me, and saved me from the life that I thought I was doomed to. I didn't know who I was, but he came for me and showed me. Within a year, I had gone from being a good Christian girl to being the queen of the Kawani.” Katherine's face glowed with the memory, and then the smile faded. “And then the League came. And I made the choice to fight them. My husband thought that we should hide, that eventually they would tire of the land and leave, but I knew better, and I sent him to his death.” Katherine's voice was matter-of-fact, betraying neither guilt nor sorrow. “I told you that at the time of his death I was pregnant, and that I believed that that was why Ra’s spared me. Neither of those things are true. I had had the child. Ra’s found her. He spared me so that I could watch as he raised her as his own; he believed that it would subdue me if he had my daughter.” She lifted her chin proudly. “But he was wrong. I would rather see my youngest daughter die than live out her life not knowing that she is Kawani. I know what it is to be raised among strangers. If my husband hadn't come for me, I would have died of despair.”

It took Oliver a minute to understand what she had said. “Raised her as his own... you mean Nyssa? Nyssa is your youngest daughter?”

Katherine lifted the oars and began to row back towards the shore. “He kept the name that I had given her. I don't know why. Perhaps in mercy; perhaps in cruelty.”

They reached the shore quickly, and this time Katherine climbed out of the boat and dragged it ashore. Only when they were both back on the beach and headed for the tunnel from which they'd come did Katherine speak again. “I told you this story because I thought it only fair. I like you, Mr. Queen. I honestly hope that you make it home. But I ask you to consider this. You fear the League; you know that they will use your loved ones against you. But I, who have gone from having nothing to being a queen; who have everything to gain and nothing to lose; who would rather see my children than my people die. What do you suppose I would do to your loved ones, if I thought I had to?” 

 

********************************

 

Felicity tried to sleep that night, but her mind was too busy. It was time to go. She had learned all she could in the short time that she was allowing herself, and all she had intended was to gain the skill to hit hard enough to give herself a chance to run – tonight proved that she had reached her goal.

The shades were open, and Felicity watched the crescent moon rise. Thea had hesitantly offered them Oliver’s bed to sleep in, but Felicity had quickly declined, and Sin didn’t want to be alone. None of them wanted to be alone, really. Even the cat had been allowed out of the bathroom to curl up with Sin and a blanket on the floor. 

After coming out of the bathroom, Sin had stopped crying, and had started talking. About Sara, and how she had saved her, not only from the men who had been threatening her but from a life with no stability and very little kindness. She had talked about their nights in the loft and about how, for the first time since her father's disappearance, she felt safe and had been able to sleep without dreams. Felicity and Thea listened until Sin couldn't talk anymore; then they waited until she drifted off to sleep. Only then did Thea toss a blanket at Felicity and curl up herself on the couch, falling quickly and heavily to sleep, as though some catharsis had occurred. Felicity wondered how long Thea had been dreading telling Sin about Sara's death. 

She was sitting in a plush leather armchair that had probably cost more than a year's worth of her rent. Of course, now that she was on Ray's payroll, she realized that she could afford a chair like this herself. She might even be able to afford a place as nice as this. Maybe, when she got home.... 

When she got home. _If_ she got home. She didn't intend for this to be a suicide mission, but she knew that there was a risk. Still, she would have to think about it, eventually. What it would be like, coming home and knowing, once and for all, that he was gone. That was what she wanted, right? Closure?

Well, no, of course not. What she _wanted_ was for him not to be dead. But that wasn't possible, and she was going to have to deal with it sooner or later. She thought about Ray, and his one-thing-a-day rule. One thing that made her happy to be alive. One thing that made her smile, or laugh, or think about anything other than Oliver. Ray had taken personal responsibility of making sure that she kept with the program. She came into work most days to find a gift on her desk. Some days it was just a flower, or a comic strip that he thought she would like. Some days it was something more extravagant. Once he'd had cupcakes shipped from a bakery in Las Vegas where she had liked to go with her father when she was a little girl. He must have called her mother.

From any other man, it would have been intrusive and far too much. But with Ray, it was different. She looked forward to seeing what he would leave every day, because the gift was always as much about him as it was about her – about what he found beautiful, or funny, or moving. With every gift she got to know him better, and the better she knew him, the more she liked him. She wondered what he was doing right now – whether he was home or at the office, whether he was thinking about her...

She gave herself a little shake. She had been thinking about Ray more and more lately, and even though it was silly, it made her feel guilty. It felt wrong to be grieving Oliver and falling for Ray at the same time. Still, she wondered what this past month would have been like without Ray.

He didn't take her breath away the way Oliver did. He didn't make her heart soar or break into a thousand pieces. But he made her smile. And when she thought of him, she felt warm. She wondered if that was enough to begin with. Maybe, when she got home, it would be time to think about that. When she had brought Oliver home – when she had buried him and, with him, the part of her that could not stop hoping – it would be time to think about Ray.

Now, it was time to think about the next part of her plan. She had put it off because it had seemed impossible, and she didn't want to acknowledge that she might not succeed. But now, as the moon rose and began its journey across the night, she allowed herself to wonder – how was she going to bring Oliver home if she had no idea where he was?


	15. Chapter 15

Katherine's tone was so mild that it didn't sound like the threat it was. The air between them seemed to expand and relax, as though a storm had passed. Here it was, the ax blade that he had felt at the back of his neck ever since he entered the mine. Oliver wondered if N'sal and Kaya knew what their mother was saying to him, what she was threatening him with. He suspected that they didn't. They were passionate about their cause, but looking into Katherine's eyes, he realized that she was more than that – she _was_ the cause. She had no hopes, no fears outside of it. N'sal and Kaya both saw a future for themselves. For Katherine, there was no future – for any of them – if they didn't reclaim their land from Ra’s. He had seen flashes of honest emotion from Katherine before, just behind her gentle smile, and now he saw the fire that had cast those flickers.

Fair enough. He knew what it was like to be so committed to something that he was willing to kill, or die, for it. He may not agree with Katherine's cause, but he would not cross her unless she gave him reason to. For now, they still had the same goal, and it was easier to trust her now that she had dropped her mask.

By the time they rejoined the others, Tommy and Kaya were sitting at a table with their heads bent over a map. Kaya was gesturing and making marks on the paper.

“The climb down will be the riskiest part.” Kaya cast a doubtful look at Tommy's one arm and he flushed. “Not just because of the climb itself, but because you'll be exposed on the rock wall. If you can make it down the mountain without alerting the League, you have a chance of making it the rest of the way to Baron. You'll have to move at night. We're coming up on the Spring equinox – after that, the hours of daylight will begin to grow quickly. Twilight will last a long time – take advantage of it. That's the time that you'll blend in best with the landscape.”

She pointed to the map where the closely clustered, undulating elevation lines suddenly spread out and became smooth. “Here, again, you'll be exposed. The tundra is flat for miles and doesn't provide good cover. Your best bet will be to dig snow caves when you're not on the move. But since you'll be moving at night and resting during the day, you'll risk cave-ins as the sun and your body heat warm the snow. There's nothing to do to minimize the risk.... you'll just have to stay vigilant and stay separate. If there is a cave-in, your only hope will be to dig the other person out quickly before they suffocate. Spring is also the most dangerous time for wolves – they're coming out of the winter with scarce game, and they might attack humans if they're hungry enough.”

Tommy groaned. Oliver smiled grimly. “League, cave-ins, wolves. Check.”

“And hypothermia. You'll be moving and working up a sweat and then, when you stop, your body temperature will drop quickly. If one of you starts acting weird – weirder than usual, I mean – it could be the first sign of hypothermia. We'll give you good wool to wear, and we'll send you with some of the dried algae. Drink a hot cup of tea made of it every day and it should help prevent your core temperature from varying too much.”

N'sal was watching the conversation with a dark look on her face. Oliver joined Tommy and Kaya at the table.

“Baron is here?” He looked at the tiny spot on the map.

“Yes. There's not much there – just a supply outpost and a couple of houses. The outpost will have a landline that you can use. It also doubles as a post office – the mail gets flown out once every three weeks, towards the end of the month, so the sooner you can get there the better.”

“OK. Anything else?”

“Yeah.” N’sal’s tone was sharp, but her lips were trembling. She pulled a knife and its sheath from their resting place at her waist and slid them across the table towards Tommy. Hard. She glared at him, but there was something other than anger in her eyes. “Survive.”

 

************

As weak early-morning light broke up the stars and began to spill across her desk, Felicity pulled up the the geological map of the area around Nanda Parbat and looked for access points. She figured she had no chance of trying to get in undetected, so her best bet was to walk in the front door and hope for mercy. From her interactions with the League so far, they didn’t seem to kill unless they had a contract or a vendetta - they didn’t have either against her. 

Even so, they might kill her on sight. She had to admit that it was a possibility, and once more wondered if this was a fool’s errand. She would have rather gone directly to the site of the duel and left the League out of her search, but that was hopeless, since Oliver left behind no trace of its location. Surely, if she explained to the League that she wanted nothing but his body, to bring him home, they would at least entertain the request? Was it worth risking her own life for the remains of a man who was beyond caring where he was buried? It sounded insane - which was why she hadn’t told anyone about her plans.

But deep inside, she knew that she would never be able to move on unless she brought him home. What good was it saving her own life if she wasn’t going to be able to live it? 

So, it was decided. She would travel to Nanda Parbat by boat, train and foot. She wished that she could take a flight but it would make it too easy for Digg and Roy to track her down and try to make her come home. She had no intention of doing so, but there was no sense in subjecting all of them to uncomfortable confrontations if it wasn’t necessary. Plus, she wanted to be able to carry weapons with her. While she was sure Oliver had a dozen tricks for secreting away lethal weapons, she couldn’t imagine getting through airport security with the long, curved knife and bow and arrows she planned on taking. 

Felicity heard a sound at the entrance to her office and glanced up. Ray was standing at her door, holding a piece of paper in his hand. She knew what it was - the letter of resignation that she had left on his desk an hour ago.

Damn. She had counted on him not coming in this early; she knew that he had been out late the night before with the owners of a tech start-up that he was hoping to buy, and even Ray had to sleep. 

At her gesture, he came into her office and sat down across from her. He slid the paper towards her.

“Counter-offer,” he said quietly. “Leave of absence with your job waiting for you when you get back.”

“How did you know….”

“That you’re going to look for him? I don’t know. I guess because I’m not blind. You love this job, and you wouldn’t walk away from it unless you thought you had to. The way I figure it, there’s only one thing that would make you think you had to.”

“I’m sorry, Ray.” She really was. “I can’t ask you to hold my job. I don’t know when I’ll be back - it could be months. Longer. I don’t know _if_ I’m coming back.” 

“Then let me come with you.” He rushed through the sentence, knowing what her response would be, and went on before she could give it. “Or let me go instead of you. Felicity, this is dangerous. If what you need is… him… let me find him for you.”

“Ray, _no._ ” She said the only thing that she knew he would have to listen to. “The city needs you. Digg and Roy are going to need you, with me gone.” She smiled wryly. “They don’t exactly know their way around a Google search.”

“They need you too, Felicity.” Ray swallowed hard. “ _I_ need you.” Again, he rushed on as though afraid of what she might say. “I haven’t pushed, these past few weeks. And I won’t push. If you tell me to back off, I’ll back off. We can move as slowly as you need. Or - if it’s what you really want - we can just be friends. But Felicity, please -” the look in his eyes made her chest ache. “I’ve already lost everything once. I _can’t_ lose you.”

Holding his gaze, Felicity slowly slid the piece of paper across the desk to him. “Counter-counter offer. You accept this, and I swear that I will do my best to make it back as soon as I can. And when I do… I’ll really be _here,_ Ray. Every piece of me. I’ll do what I need to do and then… I’ll come home to you.”

Hope flared in his eyes. He glanced down at the resignation letter again as though deep in thought. Finally, he sighed, reached into his pocket, and took out a small, crumpled, charred bit of paper. He placed it on top of the letter and slid them both back to her, slowly. “Counter-counter-counter offer. You take the leave of absence, promise not to take any stupid risks, and I’ll throw this into the deal.”

Felicity looked at numbers scrawled on the slip of paper. GPS coordinates. 

“I found it when I was helping you guys clean up the other day. It looks like he started to burn it and then changed his mind…. I don’t know why.” Felicity opened her mouth to speak but he rushed on. “I know I should have given it to you sooner. I wanted to look it up and… I was going to see if I could bring him home before you did anything. I’m sorry. It was a shitty thing to do. I had no right to leave you out of it.”

He looked so ashamed of himself that Felicity couldn’t be mad at him. “Just… don’t try to protect me against my will anymore. OK?” 

He smiled, relieved. “I promise.”

She took the resignation letter and placed it in the shredder next to her desk. Then, slowly, deliberately, while the shredder hummed, she leaned across the desk and kissed him softly on the lips. “I’ll be home soon.” It wasn’t a promise that she had a right to make, but she knew it was one he needed to hear.

As though he couldn’t bear to watch the moment of her leaving, he kept his eyes closed while she drew away, closed her laptop with the downloaded maps, pocketed the slip of paper, and left the room. She closed the door softly behind her, leaving him alone.

 

***********************************

 

As Oliver and Tommy wound their way towards the surface, Oliver felt as if he was emerging from a dream. He hadn’t realized how much his world had shrunk in the weeks that he’d been living in the mine - seeing the same people over and over, becoming entirely absorbed in their mission. When, far ahead of him, he saw the light of day - real sunlight, not smoky torchlight - he unconsciously picked up his pace. His sense of urgency was growing with every step closer to the real world - the world where he had family, friends, his own mission. The world with Felicity in it.

“Pace yourself, man.” Behind him, Tommy was lagging. Their packs were heavy with supplies -- wool blankets, animal skins that would function as both shelter and sleeping mats, water bladders, as much dried meat and bread and algae as they could carry -- but Oliver knew that it wasn’t the weight that was holding Tommy back. Now that the moment had come to leave, Tommy’s own sense of urgency seemed to have deserted him. He had N’sal’s knife strapped against his chest, underneath his shirt, and his hand kept absently drifting towards it.

Oliver paused, feeling a pang for his friend. However uncertain his own happiness might be, at least his heart wasn’t split in two.

“Hey,” he said, turning to face Tommy and the long, dark tunnel behind him. “I promise you that we’re coming back.”

“I know.” Tommy’s voice was low. “But then what?” 

_Then you’re going to have to make a choice._  

But when he spoke, Oliver’s tone was light. He punched Tommy lightly on his arm. “Then we save the day, buddy. Right?” Without giving Tommy a chance to reply, he turned and climbed toward the light.

 

*****************************

 

Felicity took another day to get ready. She had a hard time explaining to the kid at the sporting goods store what she was looking for in a backpack.

“Are we talking hiking? Long or short distance? Backcountry or car travel?”

“Probably,” she agreed. “Also, do you have anything made of, like, bullet-proof fabric?”

She finally settled on a lightweight gray pack, gray hiking boots, and a tent and sleeping bag that were light but warm. She wasn’t much of a camper and she hoped that they wouldn’t be necessary. She also stocked up on long underwear and energy bars. The whole thing cost a fortune, but when she stopped by her apartment she found a bike messenger with an envelope. In it was a new corporate credit card and a note from Ray. The card had an unlimited credit line. The note explained that getting her home as soon as possible should be considered a business expense, and that the accounting department would be turning a blind eye to her purchases for the next couple of months. She tucked it, her license, and her passport into her wallet, shouldered her backpack, and with a long last look at her apartment, locked the door behind her. Only one more thing to do.

By the time she got to the basement, the sun was going down. Roy was perched on her desk. Shit. She had assumed that he would be busy upstairs at this hour. He watched as she silently deposited her pack on the ground, reached around him, and took out a piece of paper and a pen. He didn’t move, so she pulled the chair out from under his feet, sat down, and began to fiddle with the pen. Only then did she speak.

“You can’t stop me, you know.”

“I’m not going to stop you. I’m going with you.” 

Felicity’s breath caught. Suddenly, what had stretched before her as a long, lonely journey, full of danger and doubt, looked less lonely, less dangerous, less doubtful. She hadn’t realized, until he said it, how desperately she wanted not to be alone in this. It wouldn’t have been fair to let Ray go with her - he would have been doing it for her, not for Oliver. But Roy…. 

No. She couldn’t allow him to do it. It was barely justifiable for one of them to go, let alone two. She opened her mouth to tell him, but the words froze in her mouth, and he took the opportunity to press his argument.

“Look, do you think you’re the only one with doubts? I keep looking over my shoulder, into every alley, up every fire escape, thinking that I’m going to see him there. That he never would have left us alone like this - it must be a trick, right? And then he doesn’t show, and it’s like I lose him all over again.” Roy swallowed, hard. Felicity blinked back the tears in her eyes. “You’re not the only one who loves him, and you’re not the only one who needs him. So why the hell do you think you should be the only one to go looking for him?”

Her defenses, never strong to begin with, crumbled. “But we’d be leaving Digg alone….” It was her last, half-hearted objection.

“No we wouldn’t. Ray’s on the team now, right? Ray can do the fighting stuff _and_ all the … computery stuff. He may be kind of a dork, but he had my back in the watch tower.” Seeing that he had won the argument, Roy pulled something from his back pocket, leaned over, and fastened it onto Felicity’s pack. “So that I can keep track of you in all that… wherever we’re going. Hey, do you know where we’re going?” 

Felicity stared at the bright pink bandana that he had tied to the top of her pack. It seemed silly and out of place amidst the gray. With Roy watching her and feigning nonchalance, she  started to remove it but then thought better of it. Bandanas could be useful in all sorts of ways. Maybe she would hold on to it - just for now. She straightened up, and Roy’s shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly.

“Yeah,” she said, drawing the paper towards her and beginning to write. “I know where we’re going.”

 

*********************************

 

The next morning, Digg arrived early at the basement. Felicity had been doing really well in her training, and he had to admit that he had underestimated her. Oliver would be… yes, proud. Proud of her strength and determination. 

He was surprised to find the door locked, as she usually beat him in. As soon as he flicked on the lights, he saw the note, a lonely dash of white in the middle of the blue mat.

_Digg,_ it said simply. _We’re going to bring him home._  

For a moment, Digg looked around the empty room, as if at a loss for what to do. Then he shook his head, not in disapproval, but to clear it. He crumpled the note and went to throw it away, but stopped. Instead he smoothed it out carefully and placed it on Felicity’s desk. 

Then he went to the central screen and, with a touch, brought it to life. Faces stared back at him - faces of the city’s worst, most corrupt, most untouchable criminals. There were still plenty of names left on Oliver’s list.

It was time to go to work. 


End file.
